Carolina Academic Press recently published the fifth edition of FUNDAMENTALS OF TRUSTS AND ESTATES, the innovative national casebook co-authored by Albany Law School Professor Ira Mark Bloom and Roger W. Andersen, Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Toledo College of Law.

Professor Bloom took primary responsibility for preparing the new edition. It was updated to include the Uniform Powers of Appointment Act (2013), the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (2015), Supreme Court decisions, and other developments since the publication of the fourth edition in 2012.  Professor Bloom also prepared the accompanying 250-page teacher's manual.

The authors structured FUNDAMENTALS OF TRUSTS AND ESTATES to set the foundation in trusts and estates law, while “providing creative vehicles for further inquiry.” Throughout the book, students are asked to consider policy debates, ethical issues, and practical considerations.

“The trusts and estates course has always presented the range of human experience: caring and indifference, generosity and greed, comfort and pain, support and abandonment. In addition, current movements of the law provide a rich variety of debates, as new approaches challenge traditional doctrine,” the authors wrote. “To help students develop skills and values to carry throughout their professional lives, this book’s Questions and Problems illuminate both the human and the doctrinal dramas, often by placing students in various roles.”

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In addition, over the summer, Professor Bloom prepared the 2017 Supplement to FEDERAL TAXATION OF ESTATES, TRUSTS, AND GIFTS (4^th ed.  LexisNexis) (with Kenneth F. Joyce); finalized the proposed legislation for the New York Trust Code; and worked on crafting the legislation for the New York Directed Trust Act.   

At Albany Law School he holds the Justice David Josiah Brewer Distinguished Professorship, named for Justice David Josiah Brewer, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and member of the law school's Class of 1858.

Professor Bloom is the co-author of 11 law school casebooks on tax and trusts and estates, and the principal author of the two-volume treatise DRAFTING NEW YORK WILLS AND RELATED DOCUMENTS (Matthew Bender).

He is the past chair of the Trusts and Estates Law Section of the New York State Bar Association and previously served as chair and vice-chair of the Taxation Committee and chair of the Multi-State Practice Committee. He was also the Section's liaison to the EPTL-SCPA Legislative Advisory Committee, which worked on recommending adoption of the Uniform Trust Code in New York. He is currently chair of the Section's NYUTC Committee and a member of the NYUTC-Legislative Advisory Group's Steering Committee.

Professor Bloom is an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel; he currently serves on the State Laws, Fiduciary Income Taxation and Legal Education Committees. He is also a member of the American Law Institute and was actively involved in the formulation of the Restatement (Third) of Trusts and the Restatement (Third) of Property (Wills and other Donative Transfers).

He is currently serving as a member of the Trusts and Estates and Surrogate's Court Committee of the Bar of the City of New York, having previously served as a member of the Estate and Gift Tax Committee of the Bar of the City of New York.