Category: Trusts

New York has a very strong policy against self-settled trusts. A self-settled trust is one where the Grantor transfers assets to an irrevocable trust but remains one of the Trust’s beneficiaries. While these transfers are legal, New York believes that they are “void as against creditors”. As a result, if the Grantor remains...

Joint Revocable Trust: Lots of spouses opt to create a joint revocable trust. In many situations, it makes a lot of sense to do so: First, in long term marriages, a lot of assets are owned jointly, so it can be an extra and unnecessary hassle to separate them. Second, the children are common, so...

Family Trustees: Very often, the Trustee of a Trust is a family member. There are many reasons to create a Trust, but most often all transactions are kept within a family. In those circumstances, the family member Trustee will often get paid nothing, or a nominal amount. The work is done out of...

If you have a loved one with a disability, their life can be significantly improved with additional funds (think of non-generic medicine, vacation, additional home care, specially outfitted car, etc).   Supplemental Needs Trusts are set up for people with disabilities. The purpose of this type of a Trust is to supplement, not to supplant...

In the past, when the federal estate tax threshold was $1MM, most estate planners concentrated on reducing or eliminating the estate taxes. The goal was to transfer out of the estate as soon as possible. Today’s estate tax threshold: Today, the individual federal estate tax threshold is $5.4MM. The New York State estate threshold...

Resident Trust: In general, a Trust is considered a Resident Trust and the Trustee must file New York State income tax, if the Trust was created by a New York State Testator or Grantor. What that means is if the property was being transferred to a Trust from a person who was domiciled in...

A book (and soon to be a movie) Empty Mansions tells a story about Huguette Clark, a reclusive heiress to a copper mining fortune. Ms. Clark’s father, W.A. Clark, was the founder of Las Vegas and the copper king. His daughter spent the last 20 years of her life in a hospital, even though...

Another warning for anyone thinking of using self-settled trusts. A Utah court recently decided that Utah state law should apply to an asset protection trust, even though the stated choice of law in the trust was Nevada. If the same logic will apply in New York, any local creators of self-settled trusts will be doomed,...

Earlier I wrote a post about what is the step up that President Obama wants to eliminate. Currently, the step up in basis is the favorable tax treatment that heirs get if the assets were held until death by the parent. If the mother buys stock at $20 a share, holds on to...

The federal estate tax threshold for an individual is currently $5.43MM (and double that for most married couples). The New York State estate tax threshold is currently $2.06MM (and set to rise to the federal level by 2019). That all means that for the vast majority of New York residents, estate taxes are no...