A trust is a legal relationship in which the holder of a right gives it to another person or entity who must keep and use it solely for another's benefit. In the Anglo-American common law, the party who entrusts the right is known as the "settlor", the party to whom the right is entrusted is known as the "trustee", the party for whose benefit the property is entrusted is known as the "beneficiary", and the entrusted property itself is known as the "corpus" or "trust property". A testamentary tru...
May 30, 2023•15 min
A civil union (also known as a civil partnership) is a legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, created primarily as a means to provide recognition in law for same-sex couples. Civil unions grant some or all of the rights of marriage (with child adoption being a common exception, and the title itself). Civil unions under one name or another have been established by law in several, mostly developed, countries in order to provide legal recognition of relationships formed by unmarried sa...
May 29, 2023•10 min
Brand protection is the process and set of actions that a right holder undertakes to prevent third parties from using its intellectual property without permission, as this may cause loss of revenue and, usually more importantly, destroys brand equity, reputation and trust. Brand protection seeks primarily to ensure that trademarks, patents, and copyrights are respected, though other intellectual property rights such as industrial design rights or trade dress can be involved. Counterfeiting is th...
May 26, 2023•12 min
A constructive trust is an equitable remedy imposed by a court to benefit a party that has been wrongfully deprived of its rights due to either a person obtaining or holding a legal property right which they should not possess due to unjust enrichment or interference, or due to a breach of fiduciary duty, which is intercausative with unjust enrichment and or property interference. It is a type of implied trust (for example, it is created by conduct, not explicitly by a settler). In the United St...
May 25, 2023•11 min
Sleep. The Australian Model Criminal Code Committee states the law as follows: At the minimum there needs to be some operation of the will before a physical movement is described as an act. The physical movements of a person who is asleep, for example, probably should not be regarded as acts at all, and certainly should not be regarded as acts for the purposes of criminal responsibility. These propositions are embodied in the rule that people are not held responsible for involuntary 'acts', that...
May 24, 2023•7 min
An elective share is a term used in American law relating to inheritance, which describes a proportion of an estate which the surviving spouse of the deceased may claim in place of what they were left in the decedent's will. It may also be called a widow's share, statutory share, election against the will, or forced share. Function and operation. The elective share is the modern version of the English common law concepts of dower and curtesy, both of which reserved certain portions of a decedent...
May 23, 2023•13 min
Common-law marriage, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, sui iuris marriage, informal marriage, de facto marriage, or marriage by habit and repute, is a legal framework where a couple may be considered married without having formally registered their relation as a civil or religious marriage. The original concept of a "common-law marriage" is one considered valid by both partners, but not formally recorded with a state or religious registry, nor celebrated in a formal civil or religious servi...
May 22, 2023•14 min
Those who oppose these practices argue that distribution denies the copyright holder potential sales, in the form of re-released titles, official emulation, and so on. Likewise, they argue that if people can acquire an old version of a program for free, they may be less likely to purchase a newer version if the old version meets their needs. From game developers with sympathy with abandonware. Some game developers showed sympathy for abandonware websites as they preserve their classical game tit...
May 19, 2023•12 min
Equitable remedies are judicial remedies developed by courts of equity from about the time of Henry the 8th to provide more flexible responses to changing social conditions than was possible in precedent-based common law. Equitable remedies were granted by the Court of Chancery in England, and remain available today in most common law jurisdictions. In many jurisdictions, legal and equitable remedies have been merged and a single court can issue either, or both, remedies. Despite widespread judi...
May 18, 2023•13 min
In criminal law, automatism is a rarely used criminal defense. It is one of the mental condition defenses that relate to the mental state of the defendant. Automatism can be seen variously as lack of voluntariness, lack of culpability (unconsciousness) or excuse. Automatism means that the defendant was not aware of his or her actions when making the particular movements that constituted the illegal act. For example, Esther Griggs in 1858 threw her child out of a first floor window believing that...
May 17, 2023•13 min
Lapse and anti-lapse. Lapse and anti-lapse are complementary concepts under the US law of wills, which address the disposition of property that is willed to someone who dies before the testator (the writer of the will). Lapse. At common law, lapse occurs when the beneficiary or the devisee under the will predeceases the testator, invalidating the gift. The gift would instead revert to the residuary estate or be granted under the law of intestate succession. Anti-lapse statutes. Most common-law j...
May 16, 2023•12 min
Abuse and infidelity. University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite found that "16 percent of cohabiting women reported that arguments with their partners became physical during the past year, while only 5 percent of married women had similar experiences." Most cohabiting couples have a faithful relationship, but Waite's surveys also demonstrated that 20% of cohabiting women reported having secondary sex partners, compared to only 4% of married women. According to an article by Judith Treas and ...
May 15, 2023•16 min
Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available. Within an intellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the general concept of orphan works. Museums and various organizations dedicated to preserving this software continue to provide legal access. The term "abandonware" is broad, and encompasses many types of old software. Definitions of "abandoned" vary, but in ge...
May 12, 2023•12 min
Reliance damages is the measure of compensation given to a person who suffered an economic harm for acting in reliance on a party who failed to fulfill their obligation. If the injured party could go back in time, they should be indifferent to entering into the contract that would be breached and receiving the reliance damages as opposed to not entering into any contract with the breaching party. The injured party should be put in a substantially similar situation position as they would have bee...
May 11, 2023•11 min
In a civil proceeding or criminal prosecution under the common law or under statute, a defendant may raise a defense in an effort to avert civil liability or criminal conviction. A defense is put forward by a party to defeat a suit or action brought against the party, and may be based on legal grounds or on factual claims. Besides contesting the accuracy of an allegation made against the defendant in the proceeding, the defendant may also make allegations against the prosecutor or plaintiff or r...
May 10, 2023•10 min
Insane delusion is the legal term of art in the common law tradition used to describe a false conception of reality that a testator of a will adheres to against all reason and evidence to the contrary. A will made by a testator suffering from an insane delusion that affects the provisions made in the will may fail in whole or in part. Only the portion of the will caused by the insane delusion fails, including potentially the entire will. Will contests often involve claims that the testator was s...
May 09, 2023•7 min
Cohabitation is an arrangement where people who are not married, usually couples, live together. They are often involved in a romantic or sexually intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis. Such arrangements have become increasingly common in Western countries since the late 20th century, being led by changing social views, especially regarding marriage, gender roles and religion. More broadly, the term cohabitation can mean any number of people living together. To "cohabit", in a ...
May 08, 2023•18 min
Domain names. The advent of the domain name system has led to attempts by trademark holders to enforce their rights over domain names that are similar or identical to their existing trademarks, particularly by seeking control over the domain names at issue. As with dilution protection, enforcing trademark rights over domain name owners involves protecting a trademark outside the obvious context of its consumer market, because domain names are global and not limited by goods or service. This conf...
May 05, 2023•13 min
Incidental damages. Incidental damages refers to the type of legal damages that are reasonably associated with, or related to, actual damages. In American commercial law, incidental damages are a seller's commercially reasonable expenses incurred in stopping delivery or in transporting and caring for goods after a buyer's breach of contract, (UCC Sec. 2-710) or a buyer's expenses reasonably incurred, for example, searching for and obtaining substitute goods. (UCC Sec. 2-715(1)). Consequential da...
May 04, 2023•13 min
Economics. Economics can be both a tool of the internal and external subversive. For the external subversive, simply cutting off credit can cause severe economic problems for a country. An example of this is the United States' relations with Chile in the early 1970s. In an attempt to get Salvador Allende removed from office, the United States tried to weaken the Chilean economy. Chile received little foreign investments and the loss of credit prevented Chile from purchasing vital imports. Econom...
May 03, 2023•11 min
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (for example, a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensation) or criminal law (for example, a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities), or it may cause no loss of money, property, or legal right but still be an element of another civil or criminal wrong. The purpose o...
May 02, 2023•16 min
The type, functions, and characteristics of marriage vary from culture to culture, and can change over time. In general there are two types: civil marriage and religious marriage, and typically marriages employ a combination of both (religious marriages must often be licensed and recognized by the state, and conversely civil marriages, while not sanctioned under religious law, are nevertheless respected). Marriages between people of differing religions are called interfaith marriages, while mari...
May 01, 2023•10 min
The extent to which a trademark owner may prevent unauthorized use of trademarks that are the same as or similar to its trademark depends on various factors such as whether its trademark is registered, the similarity of the trademarks involved, the similarity of the products or services involved, and whether the owner's trademark is well known or, under U.S. law relating to trademark dilution, famous. If a trademark has not been registered, some jurisdictions (especially Common Law countries) of...
Apr 28, 2023•11 min
Punitive damages, or exemplary damages, are damages assessed in order to punish the defendant for outrageous conduct and or to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some of the punitive damages in award. Punitive damages are often awarded if compensatory damages are deemed an inadequate remedy. The court ...
Apr 27, 2023•11 min
Subversion (from Latin subvertere 'overthrow') refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms. Subversion can be described as an attack on the public morale and, "the will to resist intervention are the products of combined political and social or class loyalties which are usually attached to national symbols. Follow...
Apr 26, 2023•10 min
Legal malpractice in estate planning. Lawsuits against estate planning attorneys have increased in recent years. Legal malpractice in trusts and estates is now considered to have the highest risk of exposure, representing 12% of all legal malpractice claims. Due to changes in privity laws, many states allow third-party beneficiaries to bring a lawsuit against an attorney who executed a will that is later deemed to be a product of undue influence. Experienced estate attorneys tend to be vigilant ...
Apr 25, 2023•8 min
Criticisms. There are several criticisms of class actions. The preamble to the Class Action Fairness Act stated that some abusive class actions harmed class members with legitimate claims and defendants that have acted responsibly, adversely affected interstate commerce, and undermined public respect for the country's judicial system. Class members often receive little or no benefit from class actions. Examples cited for this include large fees for the attorneys, while leaving class members with...
Apr 24, 2023•14 min
Terminology. Terms such as "mark", "brand" and "logo" are sometimes used interchangeably with "trademark". "Trademark", however, also includes any device, brand, label, name, signature, word, letter, numerical, shape of goods, packaging, color or combination of colors, smell, sound, movement or any combination thereof which is capable of distinguishing goods and services of one business from those of others. It must be capable of graphical representation and must be applied to goods or services ...
Apr 21, 2023•13 min
Constructive trust. Constructive trust is enforced in situations where the possession of a property by the defendant unjustly enriches him or her, and therefore the court decides to grant the ownership of the property to the plaintiff. Equitable lien. Equitable lien is applicable when the defendant used unjust funds obtained from the plaintiff to make improvements to his or her property. By granting the plaintiff a security interest in the property of the defendant, it guards the right of the pl...
Apr 20, 2023•7 min
Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interest of sedition. Because sedition is ov...
Apr 19, 2023•16 min
