Law Commons^™

Making Retirement Benefits Payable To Trusts, Natalie B. Choate

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Wilderness No More: Alaska As The New "Offshore" Trust Jurisdiction, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Alaska has made two sweeping reforms to its trust laws in an effort to position itself as the most sophisticated "offshore" trust jurisdiction for wealthy U.S. citizens and non-U.S. persons holding substantial U.S. property or stock. This article describes Alaska's departure from the venerated (if misinterpreted) rule against perpetuities and illustrates how the new Alaska law effectively allows taxpayers to make their own decision about the level at which a trust will be taxed. This article also details Alaska's approach to self-settled spendthrift trusts. In certain circumstances, an existing or future creditor will be prevented from satisfying a claim out …

The Evolution Of United States Antitrust Law: The Past, Present, And (Possible) Future, Albert A. Foer, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

As the world’s nations rapidly move from systems in which central planning and monopoly are replaced by free markets,2 it becomes increasingly valuable to consider the histories of competition policy experienced in different nations, on a comparative basis.3 In this article, we focus on the history of antitrust in the United States, the first nation to develop and fully-articulate a competition policy, drawing out themes that may be useful to other countries as they contemplate the shape and direction of their own competition regimes. We show that the American competition policy has reflected an underlying stability and bi-partisanship, but that …

The Trust Offshore, Antony G.D. Duckworth

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

I was not present at the birth of the offshore financial centers or of their trust business, but I am told that the mother was taxation. Perhaps that is an oversimplification, but I do not doubt that taxation was the major influence. The typical settlor was a taxpayer from one of the major common law countries, and his primary motive for going offshore was tax avoidance. But there were also a few settlors from other places, some motivated by estate planning considerations (the trust allowing them to make property arrangements which could not be made at home), some by fear …

Law For Sale: Alaska And Delaware Compete For The Asset Protection Trust Market And The Wealth That Follows, Amy L. Wagenfeld

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

For years, U.S. citizens have looked to offshore jurisdictions to create trusts that protect a settlor's assets from the claims of creditors, yet allow the settlor to be named as a beneficiary. United States law and public policy have long been against the idea of allowing a person to enjoy benefits from assets that are simultaneously shielded from creditors' claims. However, despite this existing public policy, Alaska and Delaware have enacted statutes that attempt to do just that. Essentially, these statutes claim to make what used to be possible only offshore, now possible in the United States.

This Note seeks …

Hidden In Plain View: The Pension Shield Against Creditors, Patricia E. Dilley

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines the virtually unquestioned protection of retirement assets from creditors, in both state and federal law, with a view to determining whether tax qualification or even retirement itself is a sufficient rationale for preserving debtor assets in the face of creditors' claims, and if so, what the limits of such protection should be. The problems of current law stem in large part from the use of tax qualified status as a convenient shortcut for determining the appropriate bankruptcy treatment of retirement accounts. The result is a wide disparity in the treatment of debtors epitomized by the cases of …

Wills, Trusts And Estates (Annual Survey Of Virginia Law, 1998-99), J. Rodney Johnson

Law Faculty Publications

In its 1999 Session, the General Assembly enacted legislation dealing with wills, trusts, and estates that added, amended, or repealed a number of sections of the Code of Virginia in its 1999 Session. In addition, there were eleven Supreme Court of Virginia opinions and one Bankruptcy Court opinion in the period covered by this review that involved issues of interest to the general practitioner as well as the specialist in wills, trusts, and estates. This article reports on all of these legislative and judicial developments.

International Recognition And Adaptation Of Trusts: The Influence Of The Hague Convention, Adair Dyere

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The process of bringing English-style trusts into systems that do not have a similar device is fraught with difficulties. This is especially true with respect to efforts directed towards the creation of a domestic trust law within such a system, but it is also true about the adaptation of legal institutions that is necessary in order to recognize trusts created under foreign law, in accordance with Article 11 of the Hague Trusts Convention. Thus far, it can be said that no country that did not have trusts before the Hague Trusts Convention has reacted to the Convention by adopting a …

The Civil Law Trust, Maurizio Lupoi

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

It is generally held that trusts are incompatible with the basic assumptions of civil law systems. In order to discuss this statement one would have to inquire, first, what is meant by the term "trusts"; second, what assumed common characteristics of the civil law systems are being envisaged and declared to bein compatible with trusts; and third, why those characteristics should be incompatible with trusts. It is also commonly held that the Hague Convention of 1984 on the law applicable to and the recognition of trusts concerns only those trusts that are foreign to the jurisdiction in which the rules …

Death By A Thousand Cuts: The Rule Against Perpetuities, Angela M. Vallario

All Faculty Scholarship

This article suggests the policy and social justifications against dead hand control far outweigh transfer tax advantages provided to wealthy settlors and the potential revenue expected to be generated by the abolishment legislation. The abolishment legislation may be readily adopted by other jurisdictions in light of the legislatures' failure to recognize the consequences of unlimited dead hand control.

This article recognizes that the Rule is complicated, and Rule violations present harsh consequences for practitioners and their clients. In fact, violations of the Rule, due to its complexity, have been held as an attorney error, not subject to a malpractice claim. …