<p>Should have mentioned... but I'm done with my final exams. :) I made it through first year and can call myself a 2L!</p>
<p>CONGRATULATIONS ARIESATHENA!
Onward and upward!</p>
<p>What school are you attending ariesathena and whats your take on how the first year went?</p>
<p>Tired_student,</p>
<p>Ariesathena has prudently refrained from mentioning where she goes to school, which allows her to discuss her experiences candidly wihout being personally identified. </p>
<p>AA,</p>
<p>Congratulations on finishing the year where they scare you to death. Enjoy your summer before the year they work you to death, followed by the year they bore you to death.</p>
<p>Oh, sorry I was unaware of that. I respect her privacy :) and congrats on surviving the first year Ariesathena</p>
<p>GO ARIESATHENA!!! I always root for helpful people like me.</p>
<p>Thanks guys! :) </p>
<p>(I'm also trying to avoid weird internet stalker types - CC has gotten a lot more popular in the past year or so.)</p>
<p>Congrats!!! </p>
<p>I guess I shall continue stalking until I finally decipher the school and individual, haha :D</p>
<p>so hard was it compared to undergrad? Were you a humanities, science or business major as an undergrad? Thanks.
What was the hardest course?</p>
<p>Ariesathena,</p>
<p>Congratulations on surviving one of most gruelling obstacle courses in the academia!</p>
<p>Tambone~ I did engineering undergrad, so it was not hard in comparison. There was more stuff to do - law school is a tremendous amount of reading - and it was just time-consuming to do it right. </p>
<p>Hardest course - overall, that was probably Property, because there is a ridiculous amount of information. That was the only course which I did not outline myself but instead did a joint outline with friends. It was just too much work to try to outline on my own. Civ pro was probably the easiest.</p>
<p>I'll omit discussion of other courses to thwart Wildflower's efforts. ;)</p>
<p>Congrats AA, care to explain the Rule of Perpetuity? LOL</p>
<p>Sure.</p>
<p>An estate must vest within the lives in being plus 21 years.</p>
<p>How did I do? ;) Oh, wait, it's just not that simple:</p>
<p>*"lives in being" = persons named in the will.
*The purpose of the Rule is to not allow people to control their estates long after their deaths. Prior to the Rule, a person was able to keep property within the family for generations.
*Any possible violation will trigger the Rule: when it applies, it applies "remorselessly." We learned about the "odd creatures" created by the Rule, such as fertile octogenarians (a gift to "Jane for life, and then to Jane's daughters when they reach 35" can be held invalid, even when Jane is 70, as there is the possibility that she could reproduce and die before her youngest child is 14), toddlers who can reproduce, slothful executors (who do not distribute the estate within the allowed time frame), unborn widows (assume that the person named in the will marries someone not born at the time; husband dies; widow receives a life estate and lives more than 21 years; estate does not vest in the husband-father's children within the allowed time frame).
*Some states have created modifications, such as the "wait and see" approach - if there are no violations within 90 years, the will is valid; others have allowed wills to be rewritten so as to avoid a possible violation (which happened, I think, in Estate of Kreuzer - the remainder of a life estate vested when the grandchildren were 35; this was changed to vesting when the youngest grandchild reached 21). Some wills may contain a savings clause, which will allow all remainders to vest one day before the end of the 21 years.
*There are exceptions for charitable gifts
*There are slightly different rules for class gifts. The maximum and minimum numbers of people in the class must be determined within the lives in being plus 21 years.<br>
*Gifts to grandchildren ("issue of my son John") often violate the Rule; gifts to great-grandchildren almost always violate the Rule. </p>
<p>That's off the top of my head. I'm not sure why that is still floating around in my brain instead of slowly diffusing out. Great cocktail conversation, though. :)</p>
<p>Well, keep it there until after the bar exam -- then you can forget it like most of us! LOL</p>
<p>LOL, will do. I fully intend on telling people to not give stuff to their grandchildren. ;)</p>
<p>I hate to tell you, Concerneddad, that the Rule is coming back in view, now with procedures allowing women to have babies while in their 60s and frozen embryos allowing people to have heirs born long after they themselves are deceased. Also, for a while at least (maybe still) the New York rule was lives in being plus 21 years plus a period of gestation. The Rule is not something that one easily forgets!</p>
<p>Not to mention the Rule in Shelley's case.</p>
<p>oy vey, my head is hurting. Better dust off those old case books!</p>
<p>Wow, so is law school all about memorization, or is some of it intuitive?</p>
<p>I don't know, but I think my head will hurt either way! :D</p>
<p>Good luck to me...I already feel miserable -Hmm, not really, lol.</p>
<p>I don't think law school required much memorization, did it? My recollection of it is getting a little vague.</p>
<p>(I do recall from the bar exam that a court ruled that it was not malpractice to fail to take into consideration the rule against perpetuities, as the rule may be beyond the comprehension of the ordinary lawyer.)</p>