My guest is the distinguished Boston College Professor, Ray Madoff. The subject is the power of generation skipping trusts and the rising influence of the American dead through statute and estates. Professor Madoff will talk about the following:

• Who owns one’s body, and why?
• Inheritance taxes, their affect and rationale
• Generation-skipping trusts: are they bad public policy?
• The rising power of the dead through trusts
• The enduring economic value of one’s image

                        


Ray Madoff is a Professor at Boston College Law School where she teaches trusts and estates, estate and gift tax, estate planning, and a seminar on immortality and the law. She is the author of Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead (Yale 2010), which looks at how American law treats the interests of the dead and what this tells us about our values for the living, and has done a number of radio interviews on the subject: "Legally Dead," (The Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC Radio), "Changes to U.S. Taxing After Death," (Marketplace), and "The Rising Power of the American Dead," (AARP Radio: Prime Time Focus), among others. For a full list, click here.

She is also the lead author of Practical Guide to Estate Planning (CCH), and has written in a wide variety of areas involving property and death. Professor Madoff is an experienced mediator and leading authority on the use of mediation to resolve will and trust disputes. Prior to teaching, she was a practicing attorney for 10 years in New York and Boston. Professor Madoff is a member of the American Law Institute, an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel and the Chair of the Donative Transfers Section of the American Association of Law Schools. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the ACTEC Foundation.
She is the chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Donative Transfers, Fiduciaries, and Estate Planning. Elected to the Board of the ACTEC Foundation.

Some of her recent contributions have been Op-Eds on the following: "America Builds an Aristocracy." New York Times, July 12, 2010, "Protect the Farm, Tax the Manor." New York Times  November 21, 2009, on the Leona Helmsley Charitable Trust for dogs in New York Times. July 9, 2008. One can hear her Podcast with New York Times editor David Shipley on the Helmsley Trust. Subscribe/Listen (iTunes) She recently appeared on KCRW radio discussing the new "super-rich" in America. She is serving on committee to consider whether Massachusetts should adopt the Uniform Trust Code. Recipient of grant from ACTEC foundation to study the use of mediation in resolving will and trust disputes. She was awarded the Law Student’s Association Teaching Award for “Inspirational dedication to the Boston College Law School Community,” 2000. Professor Madoff is a graduate of Brown University (A and NYU School of Law (J.D.,LL.M).

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