Danaya Wright
Professor/Director | University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, UNITED STATES
Danaya Wright has expertise in real property, including probate, homestead, heirs' property, rail-trails, easements, and equal rights.
Biography
Danaya Wright, T. Terrell Sessums & Gerald Sohn Professor of Constitutional Law and director of the Center for Governmental Responsibility, teaches and researches in many areas of real property law, including easements, rail-trail conversions, takings, heirs' property, and trusts and estates. She has helped draft legislation to facilitate probate and streamline estate planning, and she has provided testimony to the Senate and federal agencies on the Equal Rights Amendment and rail trials. She is a legal historian who studies the history of family law, including child custody, divorce, marriage, and maintenance. Her constitutional law focus is on real property and takings as well as the ERA and amendment procedures.
Areas of Expertise (8)
Constitutional Amendment Procedure
Legal History
Railroad and Transportation
Probate Procedures
Constitutional Law
Real Property Law
Heirs Property
The Equal Rights Amendment
Media Appearances (3)
The Confusing Fallout of Dying Without a Will
The Wall Street Journal online
2023-05-02
Despite potentially devastating consequences for their heirs, millions of Americans still haven’t written a will. While the total real wealth of households has tripled over the past three decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 54% of Americans told Gallup they didn’t have a will in 2021. Even the wealthy put off estate planning—one in five Americans with investible assets of $1 million or more don’t have a will, according to a recent Charles Schwab survey.
Dobbs and the Future of Substantive Due Process
The Federalist Society online
2023-03-31
The Federalist Society's Jacksonville Lawyers Chapter Presents: Dobbs and the Future of Substantive Due Process.
The Problem With Wills
The Atlantic online
2022-05-17
The chances are reasonable that you’ll die before making a will. According to most studies, fewer than half of American adults report having a last will and testament that lays out how they want their property divided up, among other final wishes. Though some portion of that group opts for alternative types of estate planning, while others might draft a will late in life, many just never get around to designating their heirs at all.
Articles (3)
Trapped Between the URPTODA and the UPHPA: Probate Reforms to Bridge the Gap and Save Heirs Property for Modest-Wealth Decedents
Penn State Law ReviewDanaya C. Wright
2023-05-27
The problem of heirs property is tragic and endemic, especially in minority and low-income communities where family homes and farms are lost because of fractionation through intestate inheritance and failure by heirs to timely probate the land and clear title. But reformers have worked diligently to address the problem by passing the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Deed Act, which provides a much-needed mechanism for landowners to avoid probate through execution of a beneficiary deed for real...
DARC Matters: Repurposing Nineteenth-Century Property Law for the Twenty-First Century
Iowa Law ReviewDanaya C. Wright, Ethan Moore
2022-07-15
This Article considers the legal landscape underlying current efforts to develop a large-scale drone delivery system for small packages to the general public. Different options have been put forward, such as flying drones over highways, within a slice of airspace over private land, and in railroad and utility corridors. We argue that there are both practical and legal reasons for focusing on railroad and utility corridors for drone delivery purposes.
Adventures in the Article V Wonderland: Justiciability and Legal Sufficiency of the ERA Ratifications
UC Irvine Law ReviewDanaya C. Wright
2022-05-15
This Article examines the paradoxical world of Article V—the amending power of the Constitution—in light of the recent ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). It explores the question of whether Article V issues are justiciable, what role the federal and state courts play in determining Article V procedures, and who has the jurisdiction to evaluate the legal sufficiency of state ratifications.
