Roth is married to his wife, Susan, and they have four children.[1]
Scholarship
Roth has both written and consulted on legal issues concerning trusts and estates.[4]
In 2011, he was the legal advisor for The Descendants, consulting on such issues.[4][8] Starring George Clooney as Matt King, a Honolulu-based lawyer and the sole trustee of a family trust that controls 25,000 acres of pristine land on the island of Kaua'i, the film forces King to confront the realities of balancing the family's long-held interest in protecting the land with selling it to a developer.[8]
The Price of Paradise
In 1992 and 1993, Roth co-authored a series of best-selling books called The Price of Paradise.[9] In them, he coined the term "Paradise Tax," a term now widely used to denote the differential in the cost of living in the United States Mainland versus Hawaiʻi.[10] He attributed the "Paradise Tax" to multiple factors including differences in regulation, land use, land availability, and shipping costs.[11]
In the best-seller,[15] he exposed how the Estate had been corrupted by the state's political apparatus and its trustees for their personal use at the expense of Kamehameha; a group of trustees who included, among others, Hawaii Supreme Court justices and prominent politicians; trustees were earning salaries of nearly $950,000 for their work as such.[2][16]
^Peter S. Adler, Joanne Punu, Randall W. Roth and Eric Yamamoto, "What is the paradise tax and what are its implications?" in Randall W. Roth, ed., The Price of Paradise, Volume II, Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 1993
^Randall, Roth (August 1, 2017). "Erosion of Trust". ABA Journal. Retrieved March 25, 2012.