Controlling Wealth from Beyond the Grave: A study of inheritance and succession with reference to the social, economic and moral considerations influencing common law and legislative developments in the last 200 years and contemplating the need 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