One of the big selling points for settling disputes is finality: you may not have gotten everything you wanted, but at least it’s over. The value of finality is especially high in the technically demanding and emotionally charged world of inheritance litigation. But to deliver on that promise you need to consider the special rules
In 2022 the Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure changed to allow district courts of appeal to review orders granting or denying leave to amend to add a claim for punitive damages by interlocutory appeal. That rule change has triggered a flood of appellate decisions clarifying the pleading and evidentiary requirements necessary to claim punitive damages
If you make your living in and around our probate courts you’ll want to understand the pressures our state court judges are subject to, which are mostly driven by the volume of cases they juggle with a fraction of the resources available to our better funded federal courts. And to get a sense of that
Dan Seigel is an experienced trusts and estates litigator who just published an article in the Florida Bar Journal entitled Creative Strategies for Defending Cases Involving Tortious Interference With Inheritance Expectation Claims. Dan’s article is a must read for practitioners. It’s both thorough on the legal theories underlying these cases and practically focused on
In today’s world the vast majority of inherited wealth gets transferred from one generation to the next via nonprobate “will substitutes” that are not subject to the costs and delays of a court-supervised probate proceeding, are not controlled by a person’s will, and are not governed by our probate code. Referred to as the nonprobate revolution, it’s a
I’m a long-time subscriber of Miami Judge Milton Hirsch’s thoughtfully written “Constitutional Calendar” email list. (Email him at milton.hirsch@gmail.com if you want to subscribe, which I highly recommend). Judge Hirsch recently wrote about The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, a short story by Civil War vet Ambrose Bierce about a plantation owner in 1854
Our probate code uses the “interested person” concept to ensure that anyone who has a stake in a particular decision made during the course of an estate’s administration receives notice and an opportunity to be heard before a probate judge rules. F.S. 731.201(23) defines an “interested person” in generic terms as follows:
[A]ny person who
If you’re litigating a case and the defendant dies, the last thing you need is to get pulled into a side fight over who’s appointed personal representative (PR) of the defendant’s probate estate. On the other hand, no one wants to get their case dismissed for failing to comply with rule 1.260’s 90-day deadline for
I was recently in a contested court hearing where a smart and thoughtful attorney and an equally smart and thoughtful trial court judge were arguing over the nature of a “constructive trust.” Is it a remedy or a cause of action? I thought I knew the answer to this deceptively simple question. Turns out I
Choice-of-law problems involving marital property are relatively uncommon, but when they do come up it’s probably going to be in a probate proceeding. Even for Florida practitioners long accustomed to litigating cross-border matters (both domestic and international) these cases can be challenging. As explained by Prof. Finch in Choice-of-Law and Property, “[i]n the probate
