Berkowitz v. Berkowitz’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently August 2021
22 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Page v. Phelps · Preston v. Preston · Dale's Appeal from Probate · Lockwood v. Lockwood · Hills v. Hart
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“. . . when it appears that a stranger, holding toward the testator a relationship of trust and confidence, is a principal beneficiary under the will and that the natural objects of the testator's bounty are excluded. The burden of proof, in such a situation, is shifted, and there is imposed upon the beneficiary the obligation of disproving, by a clear preponderance of evidence, the exertion of undue influence by him.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“There is a marked distinction between the situation where the beneficiary is a stranger and the situation where he is a child of the testator or grantor. . . . When . . . a child is the beneficiary, the burden of proving the absence of undue influence does not shift to the child, even though it appears that a confidential relationship existed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.