Claiming a Promised Inheritance: A Comparative Study

Claiming a Promised Inheritance examines those cases where a person is promised a future inheritance and, having acted on it, later discovers that the promise is unfulfilled. The book structures its analysis and argument around the stories of disappointed promisees and their unfulfilled expectations of a future inheritance, and how they might seek redress. It maps and compares the various, and often very diverse range of legal responses that a promisee can avail herself of across different legal areas of the law (ranging from contract law to property law, employment law, unjust and unjustified enrichment law, and succession law) and in both common and civil law traditions. Braun asks how these responses protect the interests of promisees and whether they are sensitive to the context in which such promises are expressed. In doing so, the focus rests on the level of protection the various forms of redress grant, their scope, and the challenges promisees face when brining a claim, but also on the values and interests that are at stake when granting relief. This book argues that due to the social and legal context within which promises of a future inheritance are normally made, promisees are usually in a vulnerable position that can easily by exploited. It further argues that the law is usually more acutely attuned to the risks that the promisor incurs and that greater attention should be paid to the challenges promisees face. Claiming a Promised Inheritance thus complements the traditional viewpoint by bringing into focus the (too often ignored) perspective of promisees.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I - Introducing the promisee's perspective 1: The social context 2: The legal context Part II - Obtaining what was promised 3: Establishing the existence of a contract 4: Establishing detrimental reliance on the promise 5: Establishing the moral duty of a promisor to provide for the promisee 6: Establishing the promisor's enrichment in Canadian law Part III - Obtaining less than what was promised 7: Establishing a claim under the New Zealand Law Reform (Testamentary Promises) Act 1949 8: Implying an employment relationship 9: Recovering the value of the enrichment 10: Obtaining deferred wages for up to ten years 11: Obtaining compensation on the basis of § 2075a BGB and § 677 ABGB Concluding reflections Bibliography

About the Author :
Alexandra Braun holds the Lord President Reid Chair in Law at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Braun is as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of European and Comparative Law in Oxford and an Honorary Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She is the Series Editor of the Edinburgh Studies in Law series published by Edinburgh University Press. Professor Braun has broad research interests in comparative law and legal history. Her current research focuses primarily on the fields of succession law and the law of trusts. Professor Braun is also interested in the impact of the transfer of wealth on questions of intergenerational equality and the cultural history of inheritance. Other interests include legal education, the study of the intellectual history of the law, and the development of various forms of legal scholarship and its interaction with, and impact upon, judicial decision-making.

Review :
With her book, Professor Braun has opened up previously unexplored fields. At the same time, through her extremely thorough, intelligent and both historically deep and socially sensitive analyses, she sets methodological standards of comparative research today. This is a book of extraordinary depth and breadth, covering the mysterious area of testamentary promises that sits between succession and contract. Alexandra Braun has considered the law of testamentary promises and how the failure of the promise to be carried out is handled across a wide range of common law and civil law countries; and New Zealand, which is the only country with testamentary promises legislation. Braun canvasses the different ways jurisdictions handle the promise to leave a gift by will to a carer, a son expecting a farm, or perhaps a housekeeper with extraordinary expertise and clarity. Her ability to compare and contrast a range of different legal cultures at significant depth is second to none. Anyone with an interest in succession or contract should read this book. They will be amply rewarded. In this impressive monograph Alexandra Braun offers a comparative legal analysis of relevant case law that is both critical and context-sensitive.