Resolving the Conflict Between Jewish and Secular Estate Law

Benjamin C. Wolf, Hofstra University

Abstract

This brief Article, "A Practical Solution to the Conflict Between Secular and Jewish Estate Law," fills a gaping void in legal literature. It addresses the conflict that observant Jews face between their desire to carry out their estate plans on one hand and basic adherence to Jewish inheritance law on the other hand. Attorneys seeking practical solutions to this quandary for their observant Jewish clients have literally no sources available to them in law reviews and journals. All that is available are out-of-print Jewish sources. And even those sources are either Hebrew sources, with no English translation, or hard-to-find and out-of-print, and even these did not comprehensively address the proffered solutions according to secular law. This Article seeks to fill this gaping void in the legal literature.