Question

Raj owned the fee simple in a piece of lan known as Blackacre, which contained a small shopping mall that was included in the title of the property. Although he had no children of his own, he was especially fond of his nephew, Ludwig, and his niece, Elise. Raj wanted to ensure that they enjoyed the benefits of Blackacre, especially after he died. He therefore created the following arrangement: Beginning immediately, and for the rest of Raj's life, Ludwig was entitled to enjoy a life estate in Blackacre. Upon Raj's death, Elise (who is 25 years younger than Ludwig) would become entitled to enjoy a life estate in the property. Although all the parties were initially happy with that arrangement, difficulties arose after the economy went into a recession and the shops that had been operating in the shopping mall on Blackacre began leaving the premises. Within six months, the entire mall was empty. Despite protests from Elise, Ludwig did nothing to protect the value of the proeprty, even though vandals were smashing windows and trespassers had begun to use the parking lot as a garbage dump. What claims if any would Elise have against Ludwig? Would she be succesful?

Answer 1

When it comes to Ludwig and Elise’s ownership rights to the property, the main reason for the natural formation of the partnership was due to the will of Raj according to the life estate to the property.
As per the Will of Raj and Will agreement of the ownership form of Life state of the property, the immediate beneficiary of the property was Ludwig on the other hand, Elise will be the Life State beneficiary on the occasion of Raj’s death. Thus there was a fiduciary duty of taking care of the property for Ludwig towards Elise because of the following facts=

Fencing could have been done along with the closing of the Mall to make the mall safe by Ludwig

As he was not able to ensure the proper maintenance of the mall due to the inability to clean the mall and thus resulting in the lower value of the mall and keeping dumpers away from the property or taking the legal action against them.
The responsibility of taking care of the property was on Ludwig but he failed to do so

Thus looking at the above facts, it is quite clear that Elise can have the legal procedure against Ludwig on the account of negligence as his carelessness results in the loss of income from the property for Elise.
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Ludwig failed to secure the interest of Elise and thus breaching fiduciary duty.

Thus we can state that Ludwig was responsible for breaching the fiduciary duty and also acted negligently and thus he must be paying for the repairing of mall and value restoration as maintained by Raj