One Restatement or Two? The Structural Question

If the American Law Institute (ALI) undertakes a new Restatement project, a threshold question is scope: Should the project be limited to trust law, or should it address the law of trusts and estates as a unified field of donative transfers?

Gallanis presents a serious case for considering a unified approach. Modern teaching and practice generally treat trusts and estates as a single subject. Wills, trusts, and other donative transfers are no longer conceptualized or taught in isolation, and a Restatement structure that mirrors that integration may better reflect how the field actually operates.

He also points out a practical reason the unification question arises now. Much of the Restatement (Third) of Property: Wills and Other Donative Transfers has aged well. With limited exceptions—most notably the emergence of electronic wills—the existing wills Restatement continues to reflect modern doctrine accurately. That durability means a unified Restatement would not require rewriting wills law from scratch. Substantial portions could be incorporated with relatively modest revision.

At the same time, Gallanis takes the counterarguments seriously. A holistic Restatement would necessarily be larger, more time-consuming, and more costly than a project focused solely on trusts. Expanding the scope increases the demands on reporters, advisers, and the ALI itself. These concerns weigh in favor of a more limited trust-only project, especially if the perceived need for updating is concentrated on the trust side.

What emerges from Gallanis’s discussion is not a simple answer, but a framing. The choice between one Restatement and two is not merely a matter of preference; it involves tradeoffs between accuracy, coherence, institutional capacity, and cost. Reasonable arguments exist on both sides, and the decision ultimately belongs to the ALI.

That recognition leads directly to a final point about how arguments for reform should be made.

Series Navigation

• Overview: Why Is There a Push for a New Restatement of Trusts and Estates?
• Previous: What Has Actually Changed in the Law of Wills?
• Next: Advocating Without Overreaching: A Model of Intellectual Restraint

Sources

• Thomas P. Gallanis, Time for a New Restatement, Probate & Property, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan./Feb. 2026), available on SSRN:
  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6123049