APRIL 16, 2012 VOLUME 19 NUMBER 15
Tax ID numbers for trusts. When we first wrote about this topic, we did not appreciate how interested our readers would be. We thought that the issue was sort of dry, actually, and that most people would have asked their lawyer or their accountant for direction. It has become one of the most enduringly popular topics at the Fleming & Curti, PLC, website.
Imagine our surprise. The questions just keep coming. We can’t and don’t try to answer them all individually — we are not here to give free legal advice based on incomplete information, and most of the questions leave out at least some of the detail we would need. But we do find your questions instructive for purposes of figuring out the level of interest — and confusion — out there.
Here are a few of the questions we have gotten (edited for space, or to focus the question on the area we want to answer). Please, please, please remember that we are not trying to give specific legal advice here — we only want to help you focus your questions for when you talk with your own lawyer, or when you find yourself arguing with the well-meaning but misinformed support person at a major mutual fund company.
The key to determining when a trust needs its own EIN (employer identification number — the correct term for a taxpayer identification number for a non-human entity) is whether or not the trust is a “grantor” trust. While your parents were both living the trust was probably revocable and for their joint benefit; it almost certainly could use one or the other parent’s Social Security Number as its TIN. With the death of your father, the question now is whether the trust (a) is still revocable and (b) contains money that was originally your mother’s.
For purposes of determining the trust’s revocability, we can ignore the fact that your mother may not be mentally able to revoke the trust. The test is whether she would have the legal authority to do so, were she competent to attempt it.
More importantly, if the trust consisted of your father’s property (and not joint or community property), then it may not be a grantor trust any longer. In that case it may need its own EIN.
Whether or not it needs to have its own EIN, it is permissible for you to get one. This is true because your mother is no longer the trustee. Many banks and brokerage houses think that the fact that she is not trustee makes a separate EIN mandatory; they are wrong. But there is no harm in getting one, and it might make it easier to deal with the financial industry. What the tax returns would look like in such a case is a separate question — one you probably ought to pose to the accountant who prepares the trust’s and your mother’s tax returns.
The most common scenario is this: husband and wife have either a joint revocable trust or reciprocal trusts. In either case, upon the death of the first spouse a separate trust is created for the benefit of the surviving spouse. This trust is irrevocable and contains assets that belonged originally to the now-deceased spouse. As we have described before, this new trust (it might be more accurate to call it a modification of the old trust, which is now irrevocable) needs its own EIN. But what is it called?
The trust document itself might give the answer. Mr. and Mrs. Jones’ trust might say something like “the share described herein shall be set aside into the Jones Family Trust Marital Sub-Trust” or “the Jones Family Decedent’s Trust.” If the document names the new (or sub-) trust, use that name. If not, we usually use language that makes clear — and helps us remember — what kind of trust it is. Perhaps “the Jones Family Trust — Decedent’s Share” is clear enough.
There is no particular magic to the language. Clarity is the key. There are no trust policemen waiting to arrest you for getting the name wrong, and sometimes it is easier to let the broker or banker win these arguments — even when they are wrong. But if you are trustee it IS important that you keep track of which funds belong to which sub-trust if there is more than one, and that you not commingle the money between trusts or, worse yet, with your own money.
Yes, that is what we would do. It likely will work — not so much because there is a clearly right answer, but because there is no easy way for the annuity company to double-check. Their form is wrong to assume that all trusts have an EIN, and you are not even permitted to get an EIN for your revocable trust when you are the trustee and the original owner of all its assets. We encourage you to put your Social Security Number in the xx-xxxxxxx format and see if it works. We have done that before and it has.
She certainly will when you die. Until then, the trust doesn’t really exist, so there’s nothing to apply for now.
This suggests a question not really asked: what happens when you die with a will creating a trust? The first part of the answer: we will need to probate your estate. If your intention was to avoid probate by creating a trust, putting it in your will does not accomplish that. We see much confusion about this point among our clients and audiences when we give public presentations. Sometimes they then say something like: “ah, but we took care of that problem — we named our son as POD beneficiary” (or, sometimes, as joint tenant with right of survivorship). Great — no probate. Also — no trust. If you want your son’s money to pass in trust AND to avoid probate, you will need to talk about creating a living trust, not a testamentary trust. But that’s a lecture for another day.
Those were fun questions, but we’re out of time and space for this week’s newsletter installment. But keep sending them in — your questions help us decide where to focus our future articles. Please remember, however, that we are not here to give specific legal advice — we look for questions that raise larger questions that help us explain legal concepts for a lay audience. We hope we have helped you understand exactly why you need a lawyer for your more specific legal question.
JANUARY 9, 2012 VOLUME 19 NUMBER 2
With the increased emphasis on (and use of) living trusts for estate planning, we lawyers are seeing more and more cases in which an old trust needs modification. Perhaps the tax laws have changed since a parent or grandparent died. Maybe what once made sense is less defensible in light of modern investment thinking, or the cost of living has caught up with what once seemed like a generous bequest. Family dynamics, always fluid, can change the reasonableness of a decades-old estate plan. Everyone knows someone whose family was once considered wealthy, and now is considerably less so. Any of those scenarios — and dozens of others — can be the basis of a desire to change something that seemed set in stone when the plan was adopted.
That’s when lawyers begin talking about trust reformation or modification. In recent years we have begun talking about decanting — pouring the contents of an older trust into the vessel of a new trust document. Not every state permits decanting, though, and state laws vary in how they approach modification of trusts. That can lead to uncertainty, family friction and even litigation.
Take, for instance, the recent Indiana case involving the trust — and the family — of John and Ruth Rhinehart. In 1997 Mr. and Mrs. Rhinehart established an irrevocable trust for the benefit of their daughter, Julie R. Waterfield. They placed $4 million in the trust, and provided that at least $100,000 per year would be paid to their daughter. When she dies her trust will divide into three new trusts — one for each of her children. Each of those trusts will pay $25,000 per year to the grandchild for whom it is set up.
That was certainly a generous gift, and should help provide for the welfare of the Rhinehart’s daughter and grandchildren for decades. In fact, the trust has grown — as of 2009 it was worth about $22 million. What could possibly be wrong with the Rhineharts’ largesse?
Sometime shortly after the trust was created, Julie Waterfield made a pledge to Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW). She promised the University $1.5 million so that a new recital hall could be built in the campus’s new music building — a building, incidentally, named after her parents.
There was only one problem with her pledge. By late in 2002, stock holdings she had expected to use for the donation had become worthless. It appeared that the only way for her to meet her pledge would be to increase the annual payments from the trust established by her parents. She would need not $100,000 per year, but more like $275,000.
She and her lawyer approached the trustees about how to reform the trust to permit the larger distributions. Everyone agreed that if she could get the approval of all of the future beneficiaries, the trust could be modified. The trustees engaged Ms. Waterfield’s lawyer to complete the process, and he filed a court proceeding seeking an increase in the distribution. The Indiana court approved the increase, conditional on getting all eighteen potential beneficiaries — current, future and contingent — to sign consents.
At a family meeting in December, 2002, all three of Ms. Waterfield’s children signed the agreement to reform the trust. One of them requested a copy of the full agreement, and the trust’s lawyer sent him a copy a few days later. Ms. Waterfield’s distributions were increased and, presumably, her pledge fulfilled.
Three years later, two of Ms. Waterfield’s children expressed concern about the increase in their mother’s distributions. They argued that their signatures on the agreement to reform the trust had been obtained by fraud, and they brought suit against their mother and the corporate co-trustee of the trust. Ms. Waterfield and the trustee argued that it was too late — that the statute of limitations on such an action ran out two years after the change was approved. In any case, they insisted, there was no injury to Ms. Waterfield’s children: there would be plenty of money available to fund their annual $25,000 distributions. The trial judge agreed and dismissed the lawsuit.
The Indiana Court of Appeals agreed. The appellate judges noted that both sons’ signatures were on the agreement, that they acknowledged they had gotten a letter from the lawyer which claimed it enclosed a copy of the agreement, and that it strained credulity to think that they would have failed to ask for the referenced enclosure if it had not in fact been in the envelope with the letter. In other words, their cause of action — if they had one — was known to them at least by the date of that letter. In Indiana, the statute of limitations on such an allegation of breach of fiduciary duty is two years — the Waterfield children waited more than a year too long before filing their lawsuit.
Furthermore, according to the appellate judges, the growth of the trust to $22 million — despite several years of increased distributions to Ms. Waterfield — adequately protected her sons’ interest so that they were not injured by the trust reformation. The Court of Appeals rejected their argument that the trust itself was injured by what they insisted was fraudulent behavior. The beneficiaries do not have the authority to bring their action on the basis of injury to the trust, but must show injury to themselves, according to the Court. Matter of Waterfield v. Trust Co., December 30, 2011.
Would the answer have been different in Arizona? Possibly. But it is more likely that the process itself would have been different in Arizona. With adoption of the Arizona Trust Code (a version of the Uniform Trust Code) it has become easier to modify or reform a trust. Some modifications can be done without the court’s involvement at all. Perhaps more importantly, it has become somewhat easier to clearly begin the running of the statute of limitations on claims against trustees under Arizona’s new law.
JUNE 20, 2011 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 22
Imagine this tragic scenario: your 33-year-old son has a serious illness, and requires extensive medical treatment. The good news is that the treatment may well effect a cure. The bad news is that it will be horribly expensive. Right now he qualifies for government assistance with that expense — after all, he hasn’t been able to work for several years. But that eligibility is about to change.
Your mother set up a trust for each of her grandchildren before her death five years ago. Each trust provided that the grandchild would receive his or her share outright at age 35. In two years, your son will be eligible to receive about $250,000 from his trust — and you think it will probably be spent immediately on medical care that otherwise would be provided at no cost to him.
Arizona (and a number of other states — but we’re not in the business of giving advice regarding state laws we don’t know about) now allows the trustee to do something about your son’s problem. It is possible to “decant” an irrevocable Arizona trust into a new trust, so long as a few basic principles are not violated. The new trust could, for example, be a “special needs” trust, allowing your son to still qualify for medical assistance.
The Arizona law is found at Arizona Revised Statutes section 14-10819. If you read it, you won’t find the word “decant” anywhere. That’s because the term is favored among trust lawyers, but not in the law itself. No matter — “decanting” is a pretty good description of what the trustee is doing. Basically, the trust’s assets are being poured from one bottle (the old trust) into a new, similar-but-different bottle (the new trust) and gaining new vigor and complexity in the process.
Your scenario might be different. It might be your daughter who is a chronic spendthrift. Perhaps one of your children married a spendthrift. You might even be the trust beneficiary interested in extending the period of the trust, perhaps for creditor protection purposes.
The amount of money might be more or less than the story we have sketched out here. You might be the trustee, or a bank or private fiduciary might have that position. None of that makes much difference — the trustee of an irrevocable Arizona trust can, unless the trust explicitly prohibits it, usually decant to solve real-world problems that have arisen since the trust was initially created.
The idea is not brand-new, nor unique to Arizona. New York adopted a similar law as early as 1992, and almost a dozen states now explicitly permit decanting. Arguably, the power to decant is not dependent on a state law — though trustees from states where there is no statute might be hesitant about testing that theory.
One requirement for Arizona’s decanting statute to be available: the trust must be an Arizona trust. That usually means that one trustee must be in Arizona, though even that might not be necessary in every case. Another requirement: the trustee must have the discretion to make a distribution to or for the benefit of the beneficiary. In other words, if Grandma’s trust required the distribution of all income directly to Junior but did not permit the trustee to ever reach the principal, decanting might not be an option.
Could you force an Arizona trustee to decant if you were the beneficiary’s concerned parent? Probably not. What if you were the beneficiary and desperately wanted the trustee to exercise its power to decant? Probably not again. Could you decant a trust if you were the trustee and the beneficiary? Oops — we’ve run out of space and time (that’s lawyer talk for “it depends”).
Decanting trusts is an interesting and useful idea. It can help “fix” problem trusts, especially where circumstances have changed since the trust was first established. If you know of a current or looming problem with distributions from an Arizona trust, you might want to talk to an experienced trust and estates lawyer about the options available.
JANUARY 24, 2011 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 3
Last week we wrote about different types of trusts you might have encountered, and tried to explain some of the generic terms, differences among and between types, and likely settings where a given type of trust might be appropriate. We wrote about spendthrift trusts, bypass trusts, special needs trusts and the difference between revocable and irrevocable trusts. Let’s see if we can clear up some of the confusion over less-common trust names.
Crummey trusts. In 1962 Californian Dr. Clifford Crummey created a trust for the benefit of his four children, who then ranged in age from 11 to 22. He was trying to address a problem with estate tax law: he could give the money to his children outright (and then worry about how they spent it) or put it in trust for them to protect it (but then not get it out of his own estate for estate tax purposes). His clever idea: put the money in a trust for each kid’s benefit, but give that child the right to withdraw his “gift” from the trust until the end of the year. When they didn’t exercise that right (hey — the youngest was only 11, and even the oldest would understand that withdrawing his money might affect future gifts) it would lapse, and the gift would be completed but stay in trust.
The Internal Revenue Service thought it was a trick, and they argued that Dr. Crummey and his wife had not made gifts at all. The IRS lost that argument, and the “Crummey” trust was born, in a 1968 decision by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. If you’d like to read the actual decision in Crummey v. Commissioner you may — but we warn you that it will be interesting to only a few diehards, most of them lawyers or accountants.
For nearly a half-century, then, the Crummey trust has been a primary tool in the estate planner’s toolbox. The trusts have morphed over time — now they are often used to purchase life insurance (and may be called Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts, or ILITs). The length of time for a beneficiary to withdraw the funds has been shortened in most cases — often to a month and sometimes even less. Some practitioners even give the withdrawal right to people other than the primary trust beneficiary. The Crummey trust in each case is an irrevocable trust intended to get a gift out of the donor’s estate for tax purposes but into a trust to control the use of the money after the gift is completed. With the present high gift tax exemption in federal law ($5 million for 2011 and 2012) the use of Crummey trusts will probably diminish appreciably.
Generation-Skipping trusts. In the simplest sense, a GST (practitioners love acronyms) is any trust that continues for more than one generation of beneficiaries. The “current” generation, if you will, might or might not have the right to receive income, or access to principal, of the trust — but it will continue until at least the death of that current generation representative.
GSTs are often constructed to skip multiple generations. The model for the maintenance of accumulated family wealth is usually the Rockefeller family — some of the trusts established by John D. Rockefeller before his 1937 death and valued collectively at over $1.4 billion at the time — are still chugging along for the benefit of his descendants.
Because of concerns about the accumulation of family wealth, and the avoidance of estate taxes in multiple generations by the use of such trusts, the federal government in 1976 introduced a new GST taxation scheme. More recent changes in the GST tax have driven the types, terms and use of GSTs. The GST tax is very high, but only applies (as of 2011 — the rules may change in two years or thereafter) to “skips” of over $5 million. Very elaborate GSTs are sometimes marketed as Dynasty trusts. One common problem in addition to tax issues: the common-law “Rule Against Perpetuities” may make it difficult to extend trusts for multiple generations. In Arizona it is now at least theoretically possible to extend a trust over more than 500 years without facing problems with the Rule. That is a sobering thought when you consider that 500 years ago the land that was to become Arizona was all but unknown to ancestors of the Europeans, Asians, Africans and even many Native Americans who live here now.
QTIP trusts. QTIP stands for “Qualified Terminable Interest Property.” Does that explain the trust type? Well, not quite.
In very general terms, a QTIP trust is probably designed for one narrow purpose. It permits a wealthy spouse to leave property for the benefit of a less-well-off surviving spouse without consuming the deceased spouse’s full estate tax exemption amount. In other words: if you were worth, say, $10 million dollars in 2009, when the estate tax exemption was at $3.5 million, you might have left $3.5 million to your adult children from your first marriage and most of the rest of your property in a QTIP trust for your second husband (or wife). That way your estate would pay no estate tax, and the tax would be due on the death of the surviving spouse. Since he (or she) had no property in our example, that means that his (or her) $3.5 million exemption would get used on your property first, and only the excess would be subject to taxation as it passed to your children from the first marriage.
As you can see, it is getting harder and harder to make a QTIP trust a good planning opportunity, except for extremely large estates with very high disparity in net worth between the spouses. But the QTIP trust isn’t dead yet — uncertainty about the federal estate tax, continued state estate taxes in some states (but not Arizona) and inertia preventing modification of older estate plans will all contribute to keeping the QTIP alive for a few more years, at least.
We don’t know about you, but we’re exhausted. Maybe we’ll tackle some more trust types on another day. Suggestions? Do you want to know about QDoTs (sometimes called QDTs or QDOTs)? QDisTs (Qualified Disability Trusts)? Cristofani Trusts? Just ask, and we’ll take a run at them.
JANUARY 17, 2011 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 2
We frequently are asked to explain the differences between different types of trusts, or to analyze a trust with no more information than its type. Confusion about the differences is widespread, and we hope to provide a little clarity to consideration of trust types.
Before we embark, we have three caveats:
We are not trying to list every possible type of trust here, but just those our clients most often encounter. We may expand this list over time.
Just because you believe your trust is, for example, a “spendthrift” trust does not necessarily make it so. Even if the name of the trust includes one of these categories, it might be inaccurate. The type of trust is determined by the language of the trust itself, and it may take some close reading to identify a trust’s correct categorization.
Most of these categories are neither magical nor exclusive. Just because we can categorize a given trust as a “spendthrift” trust, for example, it does not necessarily mean that it will be protected against all of the beneficiary’s creditors. And just because a trust is a “spendthrift” trust does not mean it could not also be a “special needs” trust, a “bypass” trust or some other category.
With that out of the way, let’s get started on a partial list of common types of trusts you might encounter (or create):
Spendthrift trust. This trust is protected against the creditors of a beneficiary. The trustee can not be compelled to make distributions to a beneficiary, or to the beneficiary’s creditors. This does not necessarily mean that the trustee is not permitted to make such distributions (after all, it might be in the beneficiary’s best interests to pay his or her debts). Even very strong spendthrift language might not be effective against some types of creditors in some states. Common exceptions adopted by state law include child support and alimony obligations or governmental debts. State laws vary widely on these lists.
“Third-Party” Special Needs trust. These trusts are usually specialized spendthrift trusts created for a beneficiary who suffers from a disability. The language of the trust will usually include a clear expression of the intent that the trust’s monies should not interfere (or not interfere too much) with the beneficiary’s public benefits, like Supplemental Security Income or Medicaid. The variation here from state to state, and from beneficiary to beneficiary, can be tremendous, so be very careful about generalizing when discussing third-party special needs trusts.
“Self-Settled” Special Needs trusts. Just to keep the confusion level high, there are also special needs trusts created by the beneficiary himself or herself. Of course, a beneficiary with a disability may have to act through a court proceeding, a guardianship or conservatorship, or a parent or grandparent. But whoever signs the actual documents, if the money in a special needs trust comes from the beneficiary’s own resources (like a personal injury settlement, or an unrestricted inheritance) then the special needs trust will be treated as a self-settled trust. That means the rules will be more difficult, both as to creation and administration of the trust. Can a self-settled special needs trust also be a spendthrift trust? What an interesting question you ask.
Bypass trust. Sometimes these trusts are called “credit shelter,” “exemption,” “decedent’s,” or just “B” trusts, but all of those names are pretty much interchangeable. The basic premise of a bypass trust is that a married couple arranges to take full advantage of the federal estate tax exemption amount, so that they can pass up to twice that amount to their heirs on the second death. That means that on the first spouse’s death a portion of the couple’s assets transfers to the bypass trust irrevocably, with some limitations on the use of the money during the surviving spouse’s life.
Bypass trusts are a special breed just now. Because the new federal estate tax law allows a married couple to retain both estate tax exemption amounts without having to create a bypass trust, there are a lot of trusts out there that may not still be needed. If both spouses are still alive it may be time to change the documents. If one spouse has already died the problems are more complicated. About the time we all figure this out (in two years) the estate tax provisions are scheduled to end automatically. We will have to wait most of those two years to find out if bypass trusts will fade out of existence.
Revocable trusts. Any trust that can be revoked — by anyone, but usually by the person who established the trust — is “revocable.” You may sometimes see the phrase “revocable living trust,” which means the same thing. If the only person who can revoke the trust has died (or become permanently incapacitated) then the trust has become irrevocable. Even if the name of the trust includes the word “revocable” (as, for instance, “The Smith Family Revocable Trust”) it may now be irrevocable.
Irrevocable trusts. The flip side of a revocable trust is, obviously, an irrevocable trust. The category just means that no one has the power to revoke the trust. That does not mean it will go on forever — if the assets held by the trust are spent or distributed, it ceases to exist even though it was irrevocable.
Grantor trusts. This term is most important in considering federal income tax liabilities, but it is often used more broadly. In a nutshell, a grantor trust is one in which the person who established the trust has retained one or more of the elements of control listed in the federal income tax code. Most important (but not the only ones) are: the power to revoke the trust, the right to receive the trust’s income and/or principal, and the role of trustee. Grantor trust rules are actually quite complicated, and are sometimes subject to some interpretation — fortunately, the shades of meaning don’t show up very often. Most trusts are either quite obviously grantor trusts or quite clearly not.
Those are some of the most common terms you might see to describe trusts. In a future Elder Law Issues we will tackle some of the less common ones, like “Crummey” trusts and ILITs, QTIP and QDoT trusts, and — well, feel free to ask us to try to describe/define your favorite trust category.
