Riggs v. Palmer

Response to paragraph 1: I agree that it is over bearing on a persons liberty when a persons will is subject to the judgement of the court and that is why I am stating that the court should not be able to decide the outcome of a will. If a father dies and leaves a will stating that he wants to leave everything he owns to one son and not the other, should the court grant the other kid half to provide justice? If your answer is yes, than we shall have to discuss the very essence of what a will is and what is the point of it. Response to paragraph 2: In saying that the court took into consideration how prepared the testator was, does that not say the court assumed the testator was not prepared for the grandson devious behavior? In order for the court to accept that the testator was not prepared, they have to believe he was not because they clearly did not ask him because he is dead. The difference with an unconscionable contract and a will is that two parties are needed to agree on something one party is offering. A will is different because there is no need for another party to agree to the creator of the wills demands. Aside from that, with a contract both parties are alive so a court does not have to assume anything, instead they just have to do their due diligence and find out from that person what went on with that unconscionable contract. With a will you cannot do that because when a will is being used, it because the person who made it passed away. Response to paragraph 3: Just because the will was not altered entirely, does that justify the court changing it somewhat? The essence of the will was that if the grandfather passes, the grandson gets a share of his property which is the very essence of the will so how has the essence of the will not been altered? If one is comparing this case to an unconscionability case then would having case precedent be a good idea when you want to keep these kind of rules as broad as possible? When this case was first bought up to court, the grandson had won the case and the court agreed that the grandson should keep the property from his grandfather. It was not until the appeal that they reversed what was initially agreed by the court. This tells me that the courts it self do not have a concrete answer for this case. The difference between this situation and a case involving an unconscionable one is that the person who created the unreasonable contract or the person who found the loophole or exploit the contract are alive and the court is able to determine whether or not one meant to do a certain action. It is hard to compare this particular case to a case that involves a unconscionable contract is because the person who created the will is dead so in return one is suppose to assume that persons intentions instead of asking them or checking how they feel about what happened. response to paragraph 4: In the seventh claim, the intention was not to use this as a defense for the grandson, rather to explain how the court is rationalizing its decision through hypothetical speaking and situations. If the court can rationalize their solution by saying the only reason the grandson did not receive the money is because if the grandfather was alive he would not approved of this then why cant the grandson say "he would not have murdered his grandfather if there was no inheritance to be claimed upon his death". We can agree that this was not the best example if looked through a literal sense so we can agree to not debate this particular claim later on. If we can treat the grandson killing someone else and later on receiving the money from the will as not rewarding someone for their evil actions, then why cant we treat these two separate actions like two different cases. As soon as he killed his grandfather and the will is in effect, the property is in his possession Controversial responses and questions: "If my intention is to buy coffee but the coffee shop is closed, the coffee shop is not taking away my coffee. I never had the coffee to begin with". If we were to use this analogy then it is not the case that the coffee shop was closed rather that after my coffee was given to me, it was taken away because of something i did that was not approved or supported by the people in the coffee shop.