Estates and Trusts Commons^™

Janus As A Client: Ethical Obligations When Your Client Plays Two Roles In One Fiduciary Estate, Karen E. Boxx, Philip N. Jones

ACTEC Law Journal

Is it possible for an attorney to have a conflict of interest when the attorney represents a trustee who is also a beneficiary of the trust? Is that situation similar to having two clients? What if the trustee is not only a beneficiary, but also a claimant against the trust? Since the trustee has three roles to play, is that situation similar to an attorney having three clients? The issue presented by these potential conflicts was one of the most vexing for the drafters of the Fifth Edition of the ACTEC Commentaries. The range of possible approaches goes from a …

Strengthening The Passivity Default, Ian Ayres, Edward Fox

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Strengthening The Passivity Default, Ian Ayres, Edward Fox

Articles

In The Prudence of Passivity, Bryon Harmon and Laura Fisher (hereafter HF) argue that "passive management become the default approach for the investment of trust funds, to be abandoned only when circumstances specifically dictate the use of active management."' In this comment we argue that their thesis could be strengthened (i) by more clearly distinguishing between default law and default investment practices, (ii) by more clearly articulating their favored altering rules.

Fiduciary Principles In Chinese Law, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

This chapter examines the principles of fiduciary doctrine that are found in Chinese law, with a particular focus on developments in law and regulation in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after the early 1980s. It also considers the advent and elaboration of what the Anglo-American legal system calls “corporate fiduciary duties,” including partnership fiduciary duties. The chapter first provides an overview of basic conceptions of corporate fiduciary duties that entered Chinese law and practice through at least three separate tracks: academic, regulatory, and jurisprudential. It then explores corporate and partnership fiduciary duties after 2006, placing emphasis on corporate law …

Probate Funding And The Litigation Funding Debate, Jeremy Kidd

Washington and Lee Law Review

Third-party funding of legal claims is becoming more common, and increasingly more controversial. Whether in the legislative arena or in the courts, the fight over whether and how independent parties might provide funding to litigants has become heated. The fight now threatens to spill over into the probate realm, where funders have begun purchasing probate rights from putative heirs. These probate funding transactions share many characteristics with broader litigation funding but also differ in important respects. The meager existing literature tends to address the issue in a pre-biased and methodologically unsound way, making it impossible to properly assess the nature …

Domestic Asset Protection Trusts: A Debtor's Friend And Creditor's Foe, Nora Hood

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In 1997, Alaska enacted the first law in the United States legalizing Domestic Asset Protection Trusts (DAPTs), also referred to as self-settled asset protection trusts, as valid legal entities. Under traditional trust law, a debtor cannot shield assets from creditors by placing them in a trust for his or her own benefit. Alaska’s statute allowing DAPTs calls the traditional rule into question. This Note will examine use of DAPTs in the United States, including whether or not the recently amended Uniform Voidable Transaction Act would consider any transfer to a DAPT voidable per se, and discuss an approach that intends …

Max's Taxes: A Tax-Based Analysis Of Pet Trusts, Gerry W. Beyer, Jonathan P. Wilkerson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Less Trust Means More Trusts, Bridget J. Crawford

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The word “trust” has multiple meanings. In everyday speech, it refers to a feeling of confidence associated with integrity, such as trusting that a friend will keep a secret. In the financial context, some law students, lawyers and lucky individuals also understand that a trust is a near-magical device that splits legal and equitable title. A trustee holds formal legal title to property for the benefit of a beneficiary simply because the grantor declares it to be so. By turning the spotlight on “trust,” in both senses of the word, one can discern fault lines in contemporary U.S. political and …

Amy Mclellan, Jd, Llm, To Lead Goldengate University's New Joint Llm And Ms Intaxation Program, Golden Gate University School Of Law

Press Releases

Golden Gate University (GGU) announces the appointment of Amy B. McLellan , JD, LLM, as Dean of the Braden School of Taxation and Director of the LLM Taxation and Estate Planning programs— marking the beginning of a groundbreaking joint program, after separate operation within the University for many years.This new high-level role signifies another innovative step forward to prepare students for today's merging worlds ob business, law, and technology.

Afterlife Of The Death Tax, Samuel D. Brunson

Indiana Law Journal

More than a century ago, Congress enacted the modern estate tax to help pay for World War I. Unlike previous iterations of the estate tax, though, this one outlived the war and accumulated additional goals beyond merely raising revenue. The estate tax helped ensure the progressivity of the tax system as a whole, and it limited the hereditary ability to accumulate wealth.

This modern estate tax almost instantly met with opposition, though. The opposition has never been sufficient to entirely eliminate the estate tax, but it has severely weakened its ability to raise revenue and to prevent the accumulation of …

Standing For Standing Rock?: Vindicating Native American Religious And Land Rights By Adapting New Zealand's Te Awa Tupua Act To American Soil, Malcolm Mcdermond

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

On February 23, 2017, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (“Tribe”) was forced to disband its nearly year-long protest against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatened the integrity of its ancestral lands. The Tribe sought declaratory and injunctive relief in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, but the court ruled against the Tribe and failed to protect its interests. While the United States was forcibly removing Indigenous protesters, other countries were taking steps to protect Indigenous populations. In unprecedented legislative action, New Zealand took radical steps to protect the land and cultural rights of …

From Strength To Strength: A Comment On Morley And Sitkoff's Making Directed Trusts Work, James P. Spica

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Prudence Of Passivity: An Argument For Default Passive Management In Trust Investing, Bryon W. Harmon Esq., Laura A. Fisher Esq.

ACTEC Law Journal

Trustees, like all investors, are exposed to a wide-ranging marketplace of investment vehicles, techniques, strategies, and theories. Trustees have a threshold choice to make with respect to the manner in which trust assets are to be invested. Active Management -- historically, a conventional approach -- aims to "beat the market" and surpass benchmark returns by picking and choosing among individual securities based on the trustee's determination that they are mispriced (i.e. undervalued) and/or by timing transactions based on forecasting. Alternatively, trustees may choose to simply invest in and own entire markets, or asset classes, and accept overall market returns by …

The Problem Of Replacement Property In The Law Of Ademption, Nicole M. Paschoal

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Am I My Brother's Keeper: Willful Misconduct And The Directed Trustee Under The Uniform Directed Trust Act, Jane Ditelberg

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Alpha Duties: The Search For Excess Returns And Appropriate Fiduciary Duties, Ian Ayres, Edward Fox

Articles

Modern finance theory and investment practice have shifted toward “passive investing.” The current consensus is that most savers should invest in mutual funds or ETFs that are (i) well-diversified, (ii) low-cost, and (iii) expose their portfolios to age-appropriate stock market risk. The law governing trustees, investment advisers, broker–dealers, 401(k) plan managers, and other investment fiduciaries has evolved to push them gently toward this consensus. But these laws still provide broad scope for fiduciaries to recommend that clients invest instead in specific assets that they believe will produce “alpha” by outperforming the market. Seeking alpha comes at a cost, however, in …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pascua V. Bayview Loan Servicing, Llc, 135 Nev. Adv. Op. 4 (Feb. 7, 2019), Scott Cooper

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that an individual who has been appointed special administrator of a decedent’s estate is entitled to participate in the Foreclosure Mediation Program if the property is the special administrator’s primary residence, and they retain an ownership interest through intestate succession laws.

La Importancia De La Evidencia En La Revisoría Fiscal: Documentación Probatoria, Lizeth Angélica Reyes Sepúlveda, Geraldine Rojas Marín

Contaduría Pública

El objetivo de este artículo, es mostrar la necesidad e importancia de la documentación probatoria que soporta la opinión y las conclusiones del revisor fiscal, teniendo en cuenta la evidencia recopilada durante la auditoría la cual debe ser válida y suficiente para lograr seguridad razonable en el dictamen a los estados financieros. Adicionalmente, se reconoció la normatividad Colombiana que aplica a los revisores fiscales con sus diferentes responsabilidades, también las prácticas frente a la documentación probatoria, esclareciendo las implicaciones legales y jurídicas del revisor fiscal al no soportar apropiadamente el dictamen de los estados financieros. También se exponen los diferentes …