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Abstract: 

Procuring a marriage opens a world of opportunity for an exploiter. Not only does it afford opportunities to acquire assets while the victim is alive, through powers of attorney, joint bank accounts, and deeds as tenants by the entirety to real property, it also is the avenue to amassing additional assets when the victim dies, through beneficiary designations on life insurance and retirement plans, and through bequests in wills. Illustrated with a few egregious examples, in one of which (the “Thomas case “a 58-year old woman marries a 72-year old man beset with prostate cancer and dementia (he denies, or forgets the marriage having occurred), the article focuses on a rash of recent cases in New York in which the spousal right of election was featured as a tool in a scheme of exploitation. Implicating New York’s laws governing guardianship, annulment of a marriage, and the right of election, they demonstrate that disqualifying a widow or widower from exercising a right of election is a complicated business.

Keywords: spousal right of election; Campbell v. Thomas; Thomas case

Affiliations:  1: New York State Law Revision Commission .