My research interests are in Inheritance Law. In particular I am interested in the changing nature of property and how the law can address inheritance of digital property, such as an individual's social media accounts. 

Controlling Wealth from Beyond the Grave: Who controls the distribution and use of a deceased’s estate and who ought to inherit it?
A study of Inheritance Law, introducing and utilising bloodline justice theory to understand the economic, moral and social considerations influencing common law and legislative developments in the last 200 years and contemplating possibilities for reform.

My thesis explores the history of inheritance law, analysing the social, economic and moral influences on its development, considering wills, intestacy, trusts, and other transfer mechanisms. Tensions between competing claims on a deceased’s estate are evaluated and current issues such as the changing nature of property and the changing shape of families are also critically analysed to understand how inheritance laws, drafted in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, may best address inheritance within the twenty-first century. 

Dr Benjamin Mayfield and Dr Lu Xu

LAW 224 Law of Torts

LAW 306 Inheritance Law: Wills & Succession