A History Nerd’s Toast to Trusts
If you are old enough that you have ever thought about your estate plan, then you are old enough to know that times change quickly. Just try explaining to your children what it was like only being able to reach people by phone when they were home, or only being able to watch your favorite TV show during a single, 30-minute window during the week, and about a quarter of that half hour was advertisements that you could not skip, block, or fast forward through. The beauty of laws is that they are still applicable despite the vicissitudes of time. When historical circumstances change substantially, the laws must adapt. Consider that, thus far, court decisions are our only guide about which digital assets must go through probate and which ones are non-probate assets; legislators have yet to pronounce on this matter. Since you are no spring chicken, your estate planning lawyer has probably advised you that, if you are rich, you should establish a trust so that you can avoid paying estate taxes. If you are poor, your estate planning lawyer has probably advised you to establish a trust so that your children can inherit your house after you die instead of the probate court ordering your estate to sell the house to reimburse Medicaid for the money it spent on your nursing home care. You might be surprised to find out that trust law is millennia in the making. If you know enough about history to figure out that you, too, will eventually go the way of all flesh, contact a Bronx estate planning lawyer.
A Knight’s Dilemma: If You Transfer Your Property to Someone Else, Does It Still Belong to You?
In their earliest form, trusts were an estate planning tool in ancient Rome. A Roman citizen could leave his property, upon his death, in the care of a “fidelis,” a trusted friend, a trustee, who would distribute the property to the decedent’s heirs.
This practice continued in medieval Europe, but it underwent a twist in 12th century England, when many landowners traveled to the Middle East to fight in the Crusades. The landowner would hand over his property to a trustee, not knowing if the landowner would ever return alive. This led to a series of legal disputes. Sometimes the landowners would return, but the trustees would refuse to return the property; they would claim that the landowners had legally transferred it to them. Often, the courts sided with the trustees, because the laws were written in such a way that they assumed that the landowner had died or otherwise would never return to claim the property. Today, the laws are clearer about who legally owns the property in the trust; there is a legal distinction between revocable and irrevocable trusts.
Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Estate Planning Attorney
An estate planning lawyer can help you figure out how trust law applies to your situation. Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.
Source:
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Fideicommissum.html