Virginia has two levels of trial courts: the circuit courts and the general district courts. Circuit courts are considered “courts of record”, while general district courts are considered “courts not of record.” Both levels of trial court have their own unique jurisdiction to hear certain types of cases.
The Recent Legislation
In a significant development, the Virginia General Assembly recently passed legislation to increase the jurisdictional limit of Virginia’s general district courts from $25,000.00 to $50,000.00 for personal injury and wrongful death claims.
This is a substantial change from prior law in Virginia, which had previously capped the damages maximum at $25,000.00, exclusive of interest, attorney’s fees, and court costs. Notably, this damage cap did not apply to unlawful detainer lawsuits (eviction lawsuits seeking judgments for delinquent rent).
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This post is part 6 in our 7-part series on the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling in 
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This post is part 5 in our 7-part series on the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling in 
This post is part 4 in our 7-part series on the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling in 
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For years, we’ve written on this blog about the dangers that increasingly-broadly-worded no contest clauses pose. The concern lies, in short, in the fact that unscrupulous fiduciaries could seek to hide behind a no contest clause in order to deter a will or trust beneficiary from holding the fiduciary accountable for misconduct. Conventionally, no contest clauses applied to challenges to the underlying validity of a will or trust itself. In the last decade or so, we’ve seen an explosion in no contest clauses that purport to be triggered by challenges to conduct by a fiduciary, or contests to instruments (such as beneficiary designations or right of survivorship designations) that are completely separate and apart from the instrument that contains the no contest clause. 
By recent unpublished 
As loyal readers of this blog know, our team has previously posted analyses of the fictional estates of the Star Wars universe (
In 
