I’ll be presenting a seminar on DIY — Do It Yourself — Estate Planning at the Pleasant Grove Library on Wednesday, March 8, 2017 at 7 PM. Come an enjoy the discussion. The address is 30 E Center St, Pleasant Grove. If you have a question about wills, trusts, and other aspects of estate planning, maybe […]
So I sometimes forget that everybody’s smart, just on different subjects. For example, I don’t know much about physics. My teachers tried, but my head could only hold so much gravity and speed of light and such. Well, today I was online in an online forum where non-lawyers posed legal questions to attorneys. These were […]
What is decanting and how does it relate to trusts? The term “decanting” sounds mysterious, but in reality, decanting is simply a form of trust modification initiated by a trustee. The trustee accomplishes the modification by moving assets from one trust to a new trust with different terms. Estate planning attorneys draft trusts designed to […]
“Decanting is the act of distributing the assets of an old trust to a new one with more desirable terms. It provides an easy method for correcting errors or ambiguities, adapting a trust to changes in a settlor’s objectives or changes in a beneficiary’s circumstances, taking advantage of new planning opportunities or adding flexibility to a trust.” Peter J. Melcher, Robert […]
What do I mean by “pinch”? Well, let’s say that you’ve created a trust, with yourself as the initial trustee. You know what you want to do with your trust, who you want to benefit, what you what to happen and what you don’t want to happen–that drug addled nephew, for example doesn’t get anything […]
My how things have changed, or at least, how my understanding of things have changed. I graduated from law school in 1980 thinking that irrevocable meant just that. Once a trust became irrevocable–generally upon the death of the settlor–its terms turned to stone, fixed and barely movable. The only way to turn that stone back […]