By: Chancellor Troy Odom, 20th Chancery District, State of Mississippi
Mississippi chancellors are often faced with custody determinations in which neither party has requested joint physical custody. This raises a critical question for chancery practitioners: may a chancellor award joint physical custody if it was not specifically requested in the pleadings?
The Short Answer
Yes.…
By: Donald E. Campbell
Michael E. Roberts died on December 19, 2016. Believing that he died intestate, Teresa Herd – the mother of Michael’s child – sought to open an estate appointing herself as administrator. Thereafter, Bryan Williams (Michael’s nephew), intervened claiming that a 2001 will (which named Bryan as a beneficiary and executor) was…
By: Donald Campbell
Happy New Year to all! I’m getting back into the groove here at the law school and an interesting topic has been circulating on a Property Professor list serve I follow: should the Rule Against Perpetuities still be taught in the first year Property law course? This same topic circulated on the…
By: Donald E. Campbell
In two recent cases the Mississippi Court of Appeals has addressed the award of attorney’s fees in estate matters. In the first case, Estate of Watson v. Watson, 2024 WL 4354006 (Miss. Ct. App. 2024) the court reversed the chancellor based on the award of attorney’s fees over other creditor…
By: Donald Campbell
There is a longstanding common law rule that a person who has been absent for an extended period of time can be presumed to be dead. See Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law pp. 319-324 (1898). Mississippi has codified this common law rule since at least 1856,…
By: Donald Campbell
Word v. U.S. Bank, 2024 WL 4489615 (Miss. Ct. App. 2024), is a case decided by the Mississippi Court of Appeals about an easement by necessity. While the court ultimately reached the correct decision based on Mississippi law, the opinion included some analysis that needs to be clarified/corrected in future…
By: Professor Deborah H. Bell
Three types of alimony (periodic, lump sum, and rehabilitative) are well-established in Mississippi. A fourth type – reimbursement alimony – was recently recognized by the court of appeals for the first time since its adoption by the supreme court in 1999. The decision opens the door for broader application of…
By: Chancellor Troy Odom (Rankin County Chancery Court)
“The party who brings suit confers by that act all necessary personal jurisdiction as to himself.” Miss. Chancery Practice § 2.13 at 37 (2017 ed.). That’s axiomatic, right? In a circuit or federal court practice, a defendant who files a counterclaim does not serve a Rule 4…
By: Donald Campbell
William Howard, Jr. and John Carpenter Nelson, Jr. own property in Forrest County, Mississippi just north of Camp Shelby. The area is wooded and undeveloped. There is a “woods road” that runs from a paved road (Northgate Road) that traverses the land owned by Howard and Nelson, but the location of the road…
I am going to be traveling over the next couple of days. I really enjoy listening to podcasts while I am driving. So, I thought I would recommend a podcast that I came across on my last trip and ask for suggestions from you for good podcasts.
The podcast that I would like to recommend…