James

P.

Spica

James P. Spica is Of Counsel with Chalgian & Tripp Law Offices PLLC in Southfield, Michigan. He is a Uniform Law Commissioner, a member of the ULC’s Conflict of Laws in Trusts and Estates Drafting Committee, a sometime American Bar Association Advisor to the ULC, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), a past Chairperson of the Probate and Estate Planning Section of the State Bar of Michigan, and the principal author of several Michigan statutes, including the Personal Property Trust Perpetuities Act (2008 Mich. Pub. Act 148). He clerked for Hon. Richard C. Wilbur on the United States Tax Court (1985) and taught jurisprudence, taxation, and trusts and estates as an Assistant and (later) Associate Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy (1989–2000, tenured 1996). His most recent article, “Power Tools for Choice of Law on Trust Validity” (in the Summer 2024 issue of the ABA’s Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal), is a sequel to his contribution to the Tulane/ACTEC Symposium on Conflict of Laws in Trusts and Estates published by the Tulane Law Review in 2023.