A Historical-Comparative Perspective on the Administration of Estates

When a person dies, the deceased’s estate is either allocated to the beneficiaries designated in a will or to the heirs at law. Estate administration covers the entire process from the time of death until the final distribution of the assets, including the satisfaction of the deceased’s creditors. Reinhard Zimmermann, director emeritus, and Jan Peter Schmidt, head of the Centre for the Application of Foreign Law at the Institute, have co-edited, together with Kenneth Reid, a new standard reference work that provides a global overview of this core component of succession law.

The central function of succession law is to ensure that a deceased’s assets pass to the living. This book examines the entire process from death until all parties, including the deceased’s creditors, have received what is due to them. Even within a single jurisdiction, the administration of estates is a complicated and often overlooked area of law.

The present English-language work offers the first comprehensive comparative analysis of this crucial area of succession law, which also has important political implications. It follows a system-neutral approach that transcends the structures and terminologies of the individual national legal systems. While in German law, and in the Roman legal tradition generally, accounts of estate administration are centred around the position of the heir, this volume makes the estate itself the starting point of the analysis. It examines developments in continental Europe and their impact outside of Europe as well as common law approaches and the most important mixed legal systems.

The book details the administration of estates in Austria, England and Wales, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Scotland and Spain, complemented by chapters on Australia and New Zealand, Canada, China, South Africa, South America, and the United States. Additional chapters explore Roman law, early-modern continental European customary law, and English law before 1837. A final in-depth chapter summarizes developments across the jurisdictions and assesses them from a comparative point of view.

Reinhard Zimmermann, together with Kenneth Reid and the late Marius de Waal, founded the international working group whose efforts resulted in the publication of the trailblazing Comparative Succession Law series. Administration of Estates is the fourth volume in the series. Previous volumes have focused on intestate succession, testamentary formalities, and mandatory family protection.

PD Dr. Jan Peter Schmidt is a senior research fellow and head of the Centre for the Application of Foreign Law at the Institute. He teaches law at Bucerius Law School and the University of Hamburg. He has written extensively in the fields of contracts, family law and especially succession law.

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Reinhard Zimmermann was director at the Institute from 2002 until 2022. He is an affiliate professor at Bucerius Law School and an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh. His scholarship has won awards including the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation and the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. He has been granted honorary doctorates from the universities of Chicago, Aberdeen, Maastricht, Lund, Cape Town, Edinburgh, Lleida, Stellenbosch, McGill, Lublin (Johannes Paul II) and Santiago de Chile.

The following volumes have appeared in the Comparative Succession Law series:
 

Image: © Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law / Johanna Detering