Trusts and Estates Library

Scope

This file catalogs what NCBE actually publishes, free, for MPT preparation — the Instructions PDF, the MPT Skills Tested PDF, the MPT Summaries for recent administrations, and the released MPTs with drafters' point sheets — and identifies which of those published items touch trusts-and-estates topics: life estates and wills (July 2019, Estate of Carl Rucker), a will contest and testamentary capacity (February 2020, In re Eli Doran), and guardianship (February 2017, In re Guardianship of Henry King) [S1][S9][S10][S11]. It then recommends, as clearly labeled editorial content, which items a candidate building a T&E practice library should practice and in what order [S1]. It does not cover NJ estate doctrine, the drafting conventions of any MPT task type (sibling topics cover those), or the MEE/MBE T&E components [S1].

Legal Explanation

What the MPT is, and why the library matters here (NCBE/national). The MPT is NCBE's performance-test component of the bar examination, consisting of two 90-minute items [S1]. Each item is a self-contained, closed-universe task: a File of source documents containing all the facts — beginning with the supervising attorney's memorandum assigning the task — plus a Library of cases, statutes, regulations, or rules, some of which may not be relevant [S1]. The MPT is not a test of substantive law: NCBE states that "the Library materials provide sufficient substantive information to complete the task," and examinees are expected to extract from the Library the legal principles needed to analyze the problem and perform the task [S1]. Problems are set in the fictitious state of Franklin and the fictitious Fifteenth Circuit, as the Instructions for Taking the MPT — the ground rules that govern every item — provide [S3]. The practical consequence for a T&E library: the governing "estate law" in any given T&E item is whatever the Library supplies — a treatise excerpt, a fictitious Franklin estate decision, or a model code — not the law of any real jurisdiction, and that is by design [S1][S9][S10].

What NCBE publishes free for MPT practice (NCBE/national). NCBE's "Preparing for the MPT" page is the official catalog of free materials: the Instructions for Taking the MPT (PDF); the MPT Skills Tested description, which identifies six skills examined — sorting facts, analyzing legal materials, applying law to facts, identifying and resolving ethical dilemmas, communicating effectively in writing, and completing a lawyering task within time constraints — and which NCBE also publishes as a standalone PDF; free MPT Summaries for recent administrations (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and February 2026); and free released MPTs with drafters' point sheets from ten older administrations (February and July 2016, February and July 2017, February and July 2018, February and July 2019, and February and July 2020) [S1][S2]. The same page lists the lawyering tasks an MPT might assign — a memorandum to a supervising attorney, a letter to a client, a persuasive memorandum or brief, a statement of facts, a contract provision, "a will," a counseling plan, a settlement proposal, a discovery plan, a witness examination plan, or a closing argument — making "a will" the one estate-document deliverable on NCBE's published task list [S1]. The drafters' point sheets published with each released MPT "address[] the factual and legal points encompassed within the MPT" and are provided "to bar examiners to assist in grading the examination," which is how graders operationalize each task [S9].

T&E items in the released packets (NCBE/national). Three released administrations contain T&E tasks, each with its drafters' point sheet [S9][S10][S11]. In the July 2019 packet, MPT-2 is Estate of Carl Rucker: the client, Carl Rucker, wants his wife Sara to be able to live in the family house for the rest of her life while ensuring that the house passes to his two sons after her death; the examinee must draft an objective memorandum comparing two approaches — (1) creating a life estate in the house for Sara with the remainder to the sons, and (2) contracting with his wife to write wills that leave the house to the sons after both spouses die — including the impact on a surviving spouse's elective share, and must conclude with a recommendation as to which approach better accomplishes the client's goals [S9]. The task memorandum expressly instructs that "the client does not want a trust; do not address that topic," so the item tests wills and life-estate law rather than trust drafting [S9]. Its Library contains an excerpt from Walker's Treatise on Life Estates and two fictitious Franklin Court of Appeal decisions, In re Estate of Lindsay (2008) and Manford v. French (2011), the latter governing the contract-to-make-a-will prong of the task [S9]. In the February 2020 packet, MPT-2 is In re Eli Doran: the client is Carol Richards, the court-appointed legal guardian of her elderly uncle Eli Doran, who has filed two petitions — to annul Eli's January 2019 marriage to Paula Daws, the operator of his assisted living facility, and to set aside the will Eli signed in October 2019 leaving his entire estate to Paula; the court ordered written rather than oral closing arguments, and the examinee must draft that written closing argument, addressing Eli's capacity to consent to marriage and his testamentary capacity, anticipating and rebutting the opposing arguments, with no chance for rebuttal [S10]. Its Library contains two fictitious Franklin Court of Appeal decisions, In re the Estate of Carla Mason Green (2014) and In re the Estate of Dade (2015) [S10]. In the February 2017 packet, MPT-2 is In re Guardianship of Henry King: the client asks the firm to draft proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law persuading the court that it has authority to override Henry's earlier nomination of a different prospective guardian and that the client should be appointed guardian for the incompetent adult, using Library excerpts from the fictitious Franklin Guardianship Code and two Franklin guardianship decisions [S11]. The other released administrations (February and July 2016, July 2017, February and July 2018, and July 2020, plus the first item of the February 2017 packet) are listed in NCBE's free catalog but were not individually opened within this topic's research budget, so this topic makes no claim about their content [S1].

T&E items in the recent MPT Summaries (NCBE/national). Among the eighteen items covered by the MPT Summaries this topic opened (February 2022 through February 2026), none is a wills, trusts, probate/estate-administration, or guardianship task [S4][S5][S6][S7][S8]. The closest is In re Nina Briotti (July 2022, MPT-2), whose underlying facts concern a financial adviser the attorney fears "might invade a trust that he administers in order to cover investment losses in other accounts that he manages" — but the task itself is a professional-responsibility question (whether the attorney may legally and ethically record a telephone call with the client, under Franklin and Olympia criminal codes and rules of professional conduct), and the trust facts are background rather than the law tested [S4]. The other items in those summaries span criminal law, consumer protection, trademark remedies, real-estate negligence, landlord-tenant, § 1983 free speech, fair housing, open-records law, medical malpractice, attorney-client privilege, family law, and a municipal flag-display question [S4][S5][S6][S7][S8]. None of the items opened for this topic — released packets or summaries — involves a power of attorney or an estate-administration/probate task [S4][S5][S6][S7][S8][S9][S10][S11].

Editorial recommendation — what a T&E practice library should hold (EDITORIAL, not NCBE guidance). The following is this topic's own recommendation for a candidate; NCBE prescribes no ordering [S1]. Tier 1, the T&E core (released items with point sheets), practice in this order: Estate of Carl Rucker (July 2019) first, because it is a standard objective-memorandum task that teaches the two classic estate-planning moves — a life estate with remainder and contractual wills — plus the surviving spouse's elective share, all in the familiar memo format [S9]; then In re Eli Doran (February 2020), the richest T&E item released, which combines guardianship, marriage-annulment, and testamentary-capacity analysis in the unusual deliverable of a written closing argument with no chance for rebuttal [S10]; then In re Guardianship of Henry King (February 2017) for the guardianship task and its court-filing deliverable (proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law) [S11]. Tier 2, format and breadth: add In re Nina Briotti (July 2022), available only through the MPT Summaries — it has no released packet or point sheet — for a trust-flavored professional-responsibility item from a recent administration [S4]. Supporting reference works for the library, all free: the Instructions for Taking the MPT, re-read before every practice item, because it states the ground rules of the closed universe and the fictitious settings [S3]; the MPT Skills Tested PDF, which names the six skills every item tests [S2]; the drafters' point sheets in each released packet, which show what graders reward [S9][S10][S11]; and the MPT Summaries as the map of what recent administrations actually tested [S4][S5][S6][S7][S8]. Because the MPT is not a substantive-law test, the library deliberately contains no NJ or national estate-law treatise: T&E doctrine (life estates, elective shares, testamentary capacity, guardianship standards) is supplied inside each item's Library, and the skill to practice is extracting and applying it [S1][S9][S10][S11].

New Jersey context (NJ-specific). New Jersey administers the Uniform Bar Examination with a minimum passing score of 266, so New Jersey examinees take both MPT items as part of the UBE [S13]; nationally, UBE jurisdictions weight the MPT 20% of the UBE total [S12]. That is the only NJ-specific point in this topic; everything else about NCBE's published materials is NCBE/national [S1].

ELI-10: Explain It Like I'm 10

[HYPOTHETICAL — NOT A REAL CASE] In a small town, Grandma Rosa owns the family house where her second husband, Uncle Pete, lives. Rosa wants two things at once: Pete may stay in the house for as long as he lives, and after Pete dies the house must go to her two sons. The sons and Pete don't get along, so Rosa fears that if she simply gives the house to one side, the other side will drag everyone to court for years. A lawyer shows Rosa two ways to get what she wants: give Pete a special right to live there for life while the house is already set to pass to the sons later, or sign a deal with Pete promising that both of them will write wills leaving the house to the sons. The lawyer also warns that the law about what a surviving spouse can claim from an estate could quietly change the plan, and helps Rosa choose the option most likely to avoid a family war. Next door, Grandpa Eli — old and increasingly confused — recently married the woman who runs his care home and signed a new will giving her everything he owns. His niece, whom the court appointed to look after him, asks the court to undo both the marriage and the new will, arguing that Grandpa did not have the mental capacity to make either decision, and the judge tells the lawyers to hand in their closing arguments in writing instead of speaking in court.

Now translate back to the real rule: Rosa's problem is the July 2019 released MPT Estate of Carl Rucker, which asks for a memorandum comparing a life estate with remainder against contractual wills and weighing the surviving spouse's elective share [S9]. Grandpa Eli's problem is the February 2020 released MPT In re Eli Doran, which asks for a written closing argument on testamentary capacity and capacity to consent to marriage [S10]. A guardianship version of the same family story — who should be chosen to care for an adult who can no longer manage his own affairs — is the February 2017 released MPT In re Guardianship of Henry King [S11]. None of these is a real court case: Rosa, Eli, and the law they need are invented inside each MPT's closed universe, and the estate "decisions" in their Libraries are exam materials, not real precedent [S9][S10]. What is real is NCBE's free library of practice materials — the released packets with the drafters' point sheets, the Instructions PDF, and the MPT Summaries [S1][S3]. Practicing on the real family stories NCBE published — the house, the will, the guardian — is how a candidate learns to work inside whatever estate problem the exam supplies [S1][S9][S10][S11].

Real Case Reference (if applicable)

No published judicial decision squarely addresses what a trusts-and-estates practice library for the MPT should contain — these are administrative testing materials published by NCBE, not litigated doctrine [S1]. The governing authority is NCBE's published MPT program materials as adopted by each administering jurisdiction [S1][S3]; for New Jersey, the operative rule is the New Jersey Board of Bar Examiners' administration of the UBE (passing score 266), which includes both MPT items [S13]. The estate "cases" that appear inside T&E MPT Libraries are fictitious authorities from the closed universe of each problem — part of the exam, not real-world precedent: In re Estate of Lindsay (2008) and Manford v. French (2011) in the July 2019 packet [S9], and In re the Estate of Carla Mason Green (2014) and In re the Estate of Dade (2015) in the February 2020 packet [S10]. The same is true of the Franklin Guardianship Code and the Franklin guardianship decisions in the February 2017 packet [S11], and of the Franklin Rules of Professional Conduct excerpted in the February 2020 packet's other item [S10]. In the same way, the "Franklin Family Code" and "Franklin Criminal Code" that appear in other released items are fictitious exam law, not the law of any real state [S4].

Key Takeaways

• NCBE publishes free: the Instructions for Taking the MPT (PDF), the MPT Skills Tested PDF, MPT Summaries for 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and February 2026, and released MPTs with drafters' point sheets from ten administrations (February 2016 – July 2020) [S1][S2][S3].
• Three released packets contain T&E tasks with point sheets: July 2019 MPT-2 Estate of Carl Rucker (objective memorandum comparing a life estate with remainder against contractual wills, including the elective share; the client wants no trust) [S9]; February 2020 MPT-2 In re Eli Doran (written closing argument on petitions to annul a marriage and set aside a will, testing capacity to consent to marriage and testamentary capacity) [S10]; and February 2017 MPT-2 In re Guardianship of Henry King (guardianship, with a proposed findings-of-fact and conclusions-of-law deliverable) [S11].
• Among the eighteen items in the 2022–2026 MPT Summaries opened here, none is a wills, trusts, probate/administration, or guardianship task; the closest is In re Nina Briotti (July 2022), in which trust-invasion facts frame a professional-responsibility question [S4][S5][S6][S7][S8].
• The MPT is not a test of substantive estate law: each T&E item supplies its doctrine in the Library (a treatise excerpt plus fictitious Franklin decisions for Rucker; two fictitious Franklin estate decisions for Doran), and NCBE's task list confirms an MPT could even assign drafting "a will" as the deliverable [S1][S9][S10].
• Editorial (this topic's recommendation, not NCBE's): practice Rucker → Doran → Henry King in that order, add Briotti for recent-format and ethics breadth, and keep the Instructions PDF, the Skills Tested PDF, the point sheets, and the summaries in the library [S2][S3][S4][S9][S10][S11].
• NJ-specific: New Jersey is a UBE jurisdiction with passing score 266, so NJ examinees take both MPT items; the MPT is weighted 20% of the UBE total [S13][S12].

Sources

• [S1] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "Preparing for the MPT," https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt/preparing-mpt (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S2] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Skills Tested" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/MPT_Skills_Tested_2023.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S3] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "Instructions for Taking the MPT" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/Instructions_MPT_2023.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S4] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Summaries 2022" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/MPT_Summaries_2022.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S5] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Summaries: February and July 2023" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/February%20and%20July%202023%20MPT%20Summaries.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S6] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Summaries: February and July 2024" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/2024%20Febuary%20and%20July%20MPT%20Summaries.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S7] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Summaries 2025" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-10/MPT%20Summaries-2025.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S8] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "February 2026 MPT Summaries" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-06/February%202026%20MPT%20Summaries.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S9] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "July 2019 MPTs and Drafters' Point Sheets" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-05/July%202019%20MPT-Complete.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S10] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "February 2020 MPTs and Drafters' Point Sheets" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-10/February%202020%20MPT-Complete.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S11] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "February 2017 MPTs and Point Sheets" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/2017-Feb-MPTs-PointSheets.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S12] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "UBE Bar Exam Scores," https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-scores (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S13] New Jersey Board of Bar Examiners, "Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) Information," https://www.njbarexams.org/ube (verified 2026-08-20).

Not Legal Advice