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Abstract:
Securities law images are broadcast to millions worldwide through soap operas and telenovelas. Doctors, and professionals in other fields, have recognized the power of dramatic serials. They have generated a rich body of scholarship demonstrating how these mediums of popular culture impart health messages or effect social change. This author describes some of those empirical studies and suggests that legal scholars conduct similar empirical or ethnographic studies, particularly on the impact of portrayals of complex legal issues such as securities fraud in serials. The author explains differences and similarities between telenovelas and soap operas and compares portrayals of legal issues in those types of dramatic serials to portrayals in other type of popular culture mediums, such as films. Using content analysis, the author then examines in depth an insider trading story arc in the soap opera All My Children and a deceptive accounting story line in the telenovela La Fea Mas Bella. The author evaluates the images portrayed and in the process critiques some of those securities laws. The author submits that soap operas and telenovelas are both social educators and social mirrors and that the images depicted in these popular mediums about securities laws influence, for better or worse, society's perceptions.

securities law, insider trading, telenovela, soap operas, ethnography

Abstract:
Income and transfer tax considerations that favor overseas asset protection trusts (OAPTs) compared to domestic asset protection trusts are contrary to sound tax policy. Tax laws should not operate to encourage taxpayers to move assets overseas to be beyond the reach of US creditors because doing so may undermine the tort system. To the extent asset protection is allowed, OAPTs should not be governed by rules more lenient than those faced by domestic trusts. Estate tax laws regarding creditor access should be interpreted to apply equally to domestic and foreign trusts.

tax, offshore asset protection trusts, grantor trusts, creditors

Abstract:
No area of tax law more vividly illustrates the dichotomy between substance and form than the reciprocal trust doctrine. When settlors began creating "crossed trusts" to evade estate tax liability, the Internal Revenue Service obtained Supreme Court precedent in United States v. Estate of Grace allowing it to tax the "economic reality" of such trusts. But subsequent cases have cast aspersion on this "substance-over-form" rationale, which becomes even more problematic when extended to income and gift taxation of such trusts. In this Article, Professor Marty-Nelson revitalizes Grace, urging that courts refrain from further dismantling a doctrine that serves useful purposes even outside tax law.

tax, law, crossed trusts, estate tax, internal revenue service, gift taxation