Preface

• Library: Estate Planning in Virginia (Virginia CLE) (2018 Ed.)

PREFACE

Decades ago, when I was in practice in Massachusetts and studying for the Virginia Bar examination, I listened to cassette tapes of lectures by Virginia practitioners and professors as I drove to and from my office each day. Of the hours of wisdom that I heard from those individuals, I remember two points in particular. One related to the lecturer's wife, who had been speeding to keep up with the rest of the traffic on a highway just outside Boston as the family was en route to some adventure on their New England vacation. She was pulled over by a Massachusetts State Trooper, who asked her if she knew why he had stopped her. Her responsive question: "Because I was the only one you could catch?" The second point, and one that I took to heart for the bar exam, was this: If it was good law in Virginia in the 1800s, then it's still good law in Virginia today.

While the first anecdote was clearly meant to be a barb directed at Boston drivers, who do, in fact, tend to consider the posted speed limit as merely a suggestion, the second point, a...