The University of Texas at Austin   School of Law

Education

• JD Harvard
• LLM New York University
• MA Kansas State University
• BA Marquette

Areas of Specialty

• Estate Planning
• Federal Income Taxation
• Tax
• Trusts
• Wills and Estates

Professor Ascher joined the faculty in January 2000. Previously, he was the Ralph W. Bilby Professor at the University of Arizona College of Law in Tucson, Arizona. Widely considered to be one of the leading scholars of his generation in the field of trusts and estates, he is the sole active author of two of the premier treatises in his field. Since 1992, he has been responsible for updating and revising Scott on Trusts, which, in its fifth edtion, is now called Scott and Ascher on Trusts. Since 1986, he has also been responsible for updating and revising Federal Income Taxation of Estates, Trusts, and Beneficiaries (Aspen, 3rd ed., 1998). Professor Ascher is an academic fellow of the American College of Trust & Estate Counsel and a member of the American Law Institute and was an adviser to the Restatement (Third) of Trusts. He has also been a Visiting Professor at NYU School of Law and Cornell Law School. During both the 2001-2002 and the 2006-2007 school years, Professor Ascher chaired the Faculty Appointments Committee.

Recent Publications

• Cases and Materials on Gratuitous Transfers: Wills, Intestate Succession, Trusts, Gifts, Future Interests, and Estate and Gift Taxation (St. Paul: West, 6th ed. 2013; 5th ed. 2007;4th ed. 1999; Teacher's Manual 1999) (with Elias Clark, Arthur W. Murphy & Grayson M. McCouch).
• The Grantor Trust Rules Should Be Repealed, 96 Iowa Law Review 885 (2011).
• But I Thought the Earth Belonged to the Living, 89 Texas Law Review 1149 (2011) (reviewing Dead Hands: A Social History of Wills, Trusts, and Inheritance Law, by Lawrence M. Friedman).

Full list of publications…