The videos of almost all of the sessions from the 2011 Applied Legal Storytelling Conference are now available online. A couple of them focused on families, death, and legacy.
Click and scroll down to watch "Tales of Life and Death" in which Deborah S. Gordon talks about including stories in a will, and contrasts the benefits and dangers of a typical will with one that includes the story behind it. (Download her article "Reflecting on the Language of Death" below.) As she points out, "Wills are a tapestry of humanity."
From the description of Gordon's talk:
This presentation will look at how stories can and do function in a transactional and, more specifically, estate planning context. Notwithstanding most drafters’ reluctance to include “extra” language in the documents they prepare, wills and other testamentary documents contain implicit family stories; this presentation will consider the numerous reasons for making these stories explicit and thereby allowing the tales of life and death to be transmitted to the objects of the decedent’s bounty.
Click and scroll to watch "First person, conflict, and denouncement: storytelling in last wills and testaments" by Karen J. Sneddon. The description of her talk:
A Last Will and Testament is a first person narrative that is one of the most personal legal documents that an individual ever executes. To that end, the draftsperson should craft a document that is more than the rote recitation of mechanized provisions. This interactive presentation showcases the opportunities to draft the Will with reference to the elements of fiction and elements of poetry in a manner that maximizes the effectiveness of the Last Will and Testament.
From a quick scan, it appears that the only video not available is, unfortunately, the one on mediation by Robert Lancaster of Louisiana State University.
As mentioned above, here is the abstract of "Reflecting on the Language of Death" (Seattle University Law Review):
For centuries, wills scholars have lamented the difficulty of discerning intent from testamentary documents but have failed to examine how these documents might be written differently. A will can reflect and reinforce the decedent’s relationships with friends and family, can express support for institutions and causes in which the decedent believes, and can establish the decedent’s lasting legacy. And even if the will is simple and mundane, dealing only with the decedent’s personal possessions or naming her fiduciaries, its terminal nature imbues the will with talismanic power. Often the final significant written communication by its author, a will has the potential to be a monument – or indeed a testament – to the decedent’s loved ones, to express her vision for the future or her version of the past. More often than not, however, today’s will is written in an insider’s private language, so that testator after testator exclaims at her will execution ceremony about the formal, dry, and sometimes archaic, legalistic writing. Is this necessary?
This article explores the advantages and pitfalls of infusing wills with expressive language. Legal scholars have widely acknowledged the power and resonance that personal narratives bring to briefs, judicial opinions, and other persuasive legal writing. This scholarship has suggested the critical role of narratives in giving meaning beyond mere rules and doctrine. Remarkably, given the intense emotional aspects of death, scholars have largely ignored the role of expressive and individualized language in wills. This article takes seriously the ways in which such language might enhance the meaning and significance of transactional documents, such as wills.
After exploring the costs and benefits to testators, beneficiaries, fiduciaries, courts and society of expressive will drafting, this article argues that encouraging a testator to use richer, more varied language can actually help the testator focus on her own intentions and then communicate those intentions to the people she leaves behind. Moreover, this article rejects the argument that including apparently “unnecessary” language in a will inherently results in more litigation. Rather, it suggests that expressive language has the potential to avert litigation and, when contests do occur, facilitate the court’s analysis of the challenged instrument. Far from “unnecessary,” the inclusion of expressive language in a testator’s final will and testament can strengthen the testator’s connection to her personal identity and her community, an important step in furthering the ultimate goal of having her property pass effectively as she intends and desires.
Click to download the article at SSRN.
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