Real Estate & Property Law

"To Have and to Hold: A Romantic Guide to Document Preservation"
In the news: "'Romantic' would not be the first or last word that comes to mind when considering the best practices in document preservation. But Gibson Dunn attorney Farrah Pepper shows that the same common-sense principles that preserve romantic unions...

Geek Valentines
Romantic Cryptography. From the abstract: We show how Alice and Bob can establish whether they love each other, but without the embarrassement of revealing that they do if the other party does not share their feelings...

5 Gift Tax Myths Addressed
Forbes dispels 5 myths about gifts and taxes: Myth 1: You have to pay tax on gifts you receive. Truth: You don?t owe tax on gifts you receive. The person who gives the gift may owe tax...

The Revenge of the Romantic Author
Critics of the “romantic author” critique of copyright law are back.  As the Dan Hicks song goes, how can I miss the romantic author if she won’t go away? Three new IP papers on “originality” in copyright law have been posted recently on SSRN, two of which emphasize the idea that copyright law should do more [...

This week: Give yourself a gift
Those of us celebrating important holidays the next couple of weeks are probably thinking about gifts. Gifts are wonderful--to give and to receive--but one kind of thinking about gifts may be getting in the way of becoming a more effective....

WSJ: IRS Trolls Through State Records for Unreported Gifts of Real Estate
Wall Street Journal, IRS Scrutinizes Gifts of Real Estate, by Arden Dale: The IRS has a low-profile but sweeping effort under way to use state land-transfer records for evidence of omissions in reporting gifts of real estate to family members...