Education

B.A., 1968, Barnard College
J.D., 1971, University of Virginia School of Law

About

Professor Hess specializes in trusts and estates, property, and taxation. Before beginning her teaching career in 1980, she practiced law in New York City and Charlottesville, Virginia, concentrating her practice in estate planning and administration. In 2008, she was instrumental in founding the Homer A. Jones, Jr., Wills Clinic, one of the live-client clinics at the College of Law. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the University of Texas, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Alabama. From 2010 to 2012, Professor Hess taught estate planning in the distance education LLM in taxation program at the University of Alabama.

Since 1994, Hess has been the successor author of Bogert, The Law of Trusts and Trustees, a leading multi-volume treatise in the field. Her articles on federal taxation have appeared in the Tennessee Law Review, the Real Property, Probate and Trust Journal, and the Tax Lawyer. She also is the co-author of a casebook on the law of trusts and estates. Professor Hess was an associate editor of the Real Property, Probate and Trust Journal from 1990 until 1997 and the editor-in-chief from 1997 to 2001. She served as the American Bar Association advisor to a committee of the uniform law commission that drafted the Uniform Powers of Appointment Act. In addition to her academic activities, Professor Hess consults and acts as an expert witness on matters involving estates and trusts law.

From 2005 to 2012, Hess’s principal research interest was attitudes toward estate planning among the baby boomer generation. She presented the results of her research at various seminars across the country. In 2013, she turned her attention to the estate planning challenges posed by changing notions of the family. This research formed the basis of several presentations, most recently a national webinar presented in February 2019 titled “Drafting for the Twenty-First Century Family.”

In 2005, Professor Hess received the Treat Award for Excellence from the National College of Probate Judges for her many contributions to the development of probate and trust law. In 2018, she was inducted in to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Estate Planners and Councils. At the University of Tennessee, she has been twice honored with the Bass, Berry & Sims Award for Service to the Bench and Bar, and the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award. She also received the UTK National Alumni Outstanding Teacher Award, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship. She is an academic fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.