Bar Exam, Day 3
Yesterday was the last day of the Texas Bar Exam. Six essays in the morning, six in the afternoon. The essays this time were somteimes very different than thay had been in the last few exams. The surprises:
| Topics I expected | What it asked for |
| Corporate directors | LLC members |
| Holder in due course /transfer warranties | Accord and satisfaction |
| PMSIs and priority under Art. 9 | Repossession and sale |
| Child support or custody | Community property (2x) |
| A tough wills question | An easy wills question |
| Oil & gas royalties | Pooling |
From what I gather by talking to other test-takers, the accord and satisfaction question threw everyone for a loop. We spent so much time making sure we knew what would happen with things like purchase-money security interests in inventory that when we got to the question that asked "Was there an accord and satisfaction?" we all gave a collective "Huh?"
Sometimes the questions were so direct and straightforward that people didn't believe the test takers' recitation of the facts and included what the result would be in other scenarios, just in case the question's author was lying about the facts. Example: H marries W1. He takes out a life insurance policy and names W1 the beneficiary. They have no children. They later divorce, and H marries W2. H doesn't change the policy, but he does make a will that leaves the life insurance money to W2. H dies. Who gets the insurance money? OK, where's the adoption by estoppel, the pretermitted child, the 20-year-old stranger claiming to be H's child, born from H's indiscretion? Where's the holographic will written in a state that doesn'gt recognize holographic wills, but brought to Texas? It wasn't there! So some people made it up. "If H had children..." as if it mattered. No, I didn't do that.
After the exam, those of us who went through law school together walked over to the Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner. Everyone said they were glad it was over, and how we would all see each other at the swearing-in ceremony in May, which seems like a loong way off.
2 Comments:
Congrats on it being done! So what is the answer to the life insurance question? In Alaska, there's a statute that apparently allows a later will to override a beneficiary designation, although the financial institutions always argue about it. But there's also a statute that says divorce revokes a revocable designation, so here, the divorce would automatically kick off the first spouse.
Thanks! It feels good to be done. (?) I believe the answer is that by statute, a divorce automatically revokes the beneficiary of the life insurance policy unless he does something to reaffirm it after the divorce. It's treated as if she predeceased. A beneficiary to a separate life insurance policy can't be assigned by will, so the provision in the will regarding the policy has no effect. Regardless, as the sole survivor of Husband, Wife2 gets the money. At least, that was my answer. :-)
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