加载中…Succession Law 继承法
1. Words and expressions
- Inheritance 继承权
- Succession继承
- Living will 有效遗嘱
- Legal heirs 法定继承人
- Legal cotody法定监护
- Joint property 共有财产
- Parcener 遗产共同继承人
- testament 遗嘱
- will 遗嘱
- Testator 立遗嘱者
- Intestate 没有留下遗嘱的
- Testate 留有遗嘱的
- Intestate succession 无遗嘱继承
- Intestate inheritance 无遗嘱继承，即法定继承
- Freedom of testament 遗嘱的自由
- Successor 继承人，接班人
- The disposition of property 财产的处分
- In favor of 有利于
- Be entitled to被赋予权力
- Reserved share 保留份额
- Estate 财产，遗产
- Authenticate 认证人，公证员，遗嘱的认证或经认证的遗嘱
- Vest in sb. 授权给某人
- designated被指定的
- renunciation 放弃，抛弃
2. definition of special terms:
living will:
living will is a written document that states a person’s wishes regarding life-support usually when death is imminent. 有效遗嘱是当一个人面临死亡时所作的关于生活抚养方面的书面愿望。
Legal custody:
Legal custody in a divorce is one of two types of child custody. 离婚中的法律监护是两种类型中的儿童监护中的一种。
3. passage
succession law covers the
disposition of property upon death by will or by intestate
inheritance.
Two typical aspects of civil law succession have attracted considerable attention in the United States in recent years. The first is the practice of having a will authencated before a notary, the second is the fact that in the normal situation there is nothing corresponding to our period of administration of a decedent’s estate. An inheritance simply vests upon death in the persons designated by the will or the laws of intestate succession, subject to their right of renunciation.
Another idea fom the civil law of succession has already been incorporated into many American probate law reforms.
继承法包括通过遗嘱或依法继承来处分财产。在民法法系国家，遗嘱自由典型地受到有利于立遗嘱人子女的限制，使他们有权获得其父母遗产的保留份额。不像美国的法律，民法体系传统地不按这样被迫的分配法给在世的配偶，因为他们的经济利益被认为受到婚姻财产法的足够保护。但是，在有些国家，现在的趋势是逐渐提高生存配偶的继承人地位。
近年来，在美国有两个典型的继承法引起人们的广泛注意。一个是在公证人面前进行遗嘱认证，另一个是在正常情况下没有相应的管理死者遗产的期间,被继承人死亡后，继承权共授予那些通过遗嘱指明的或在无遗嘱继承下依法规定的人，且他们可以放弃继承权。美国对遗产改革的另一个思想反应在继承法中并写入许多遗嘱继承法。
4. Supplementary Reading:
The law of succession
This field, the law of wills and trust, is closely related to property law as such. It is the branch of law which, essentially, considers how property is passed along from one generation to the next. In the United States, there is a strong system of private property. Property is allocated among individual owners, by and large; this practice is unlike that in many societies, where land is generally owned in common or by clans, families, or tribes. We tend to own our land and homes outright, along with whatever else we possess, from rings and wristwatches to stocks and bonds and money in the bank. Since it is a fundemental rule that we all die in the end and take nothing with us, this property must somehow move on at our death.
One way to make this happen is to execute a will. You, the owner, will decide, for the most part, what should become of your worldly goods when you die. This is the principle of “freedom of testation”. You decide – but you must do it in a certain way. If you forget to make a will (or botch the job of drawing it up), you have died “intestate”, and the state will distribute the property for you according to a fixed scheme set out in the statute books. Intestate property passes to the heirs at law, the nearest surviving relatives. If you leave behind a large enough estate, the government takes a bit of it too, in the form of taxes.
A will is a formal document. It must be made out just right, and in most states it needs two witnesses. In about half the states mostly in the West and South, you can also execute a will without witnesses, the so-called holographic will. This kind must be written entirely by hand by the testator (the person whose will it is); no typing is allowed. If you have a valid will, you can disinherit any relatives you choose. Except in Louisiana a parent can, with a stroke of the pen, cut off his children without a penny. A husband or wife cannot be cut off so easily. The surviving spouse has rights to a share of the estate, and it is not easy to disinherit her totally.
Trusts are arrangements which, in essence, transfer property to a trustee (often a bank), to invest and to manage. The trustees pay the income to one or more “beneficiaries”, who are quite passive; they sit back and collect the money. Trusts are gifts, and rich people use them as part of a general estate plan – their scheme for orderly disposition of their property. Many trusts are “testamentary”, that is, part of a plan contained in a will. Others are set up long before death; but even these generally have death and death taxes in mind. The law of trusts goes together with the law of wills. Lawyers who specialize in this branch search for the best, cheapest, and most effective way to carry out the wishes of their clients, at the same time avoiding the buzzards of taxation as much as possible.
Estate planning is basically a law for the rich. Most people do not have enough “estate” to need the fanciest tricks of the trade. Adults who have money or property do need wills; but many people do not bother with them. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, a study in 1964-65 found that almost a third of the estates probated lacked wills. The percentage of “intestacy” was probably higher in the general population; many people who die leave so little money that the family doesn’t bother with probate.
Socio-legal scholars have paid little attention to the law of succession. This is unfortunate. It is a crucial branch of law – vital to social continuity as DNA is to survival of the species. Since all of us eventually die, society must reproduce itself every generation – not only biologically, but also socially and structurally. The basic process is far from mysterious. Social norms and structures cross from generation to generation through education, child bearing, and other processes that mold the new generation in the shape of the old one. But the inheritance of property also plays a crucial part. Without the laws of succession there would be no such things as “old money”, aristocracy, or “good families”. Each generation would start over, and social structure would be fundamentally altered.
Perhaps for the better, perhaps not. But life would be different, in a revolutionary way. And the middle class, too, has a stake in the law of succession. The law permits money to flow across time, and specifies how this is to be done. Without succession, there would be no heirlooms, no old family homes, no gifts left to grandchildren for college.
Perhaps just as important as the rights of inheritance are the limits on inheritance. There are complicated rules about estate taxes. The larger the estate are, the more taxes they pay, but there are important escape valves. One of these is the unlimited right to give to charity, tax-free. Without this right, the great foundatios would not exist. Other rules limit dynasties of wealth in their duration. No trust, except for a charity, can last forever. The limiting rule is called the rule against perpetuities.
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