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    Fourteen Tips for More Flexible Trusts

    WealthManagement.com
    Nov 07, 2018

    Louis S. Harrison, Kim Kamin, Martin M. Shenkman 

    If you were creating a trust 100 years ago, what would have been on your mind?

    World War I had just ended. Automobiles were becoming more common. There
    were no commercial airplanes. Babe Ruth was a pitcher for Boston. Women didn’t
    have the right to vote. Divorce was very rare. Adopted children didn’t have a right to
    inherit from grandparents. Children born outside of marriage were scorned and had
    no inheritance rights.

    Consider the rapid pace of changes in social norms, technology and the law over just
    the past decade, let alone the past century, in terms of topics such as same-sex
    marriage, gender identity, assisted reproductive technologies, digital assets and
    cryptocurrencies. And, of course, the tax landscape is always changing.

    The process in which we do estate planning hasn’t changed at near this pace. Too
    often, the manner in which practitioners endeavor to help families plan is mired in
    our past ways of doing things rather than thinking ahead and planning for the next
    100 years. With the trend toward longer lasting (even perpetual) trusts, most trusts
    are being designed to contemplate that they’ll still exist in hundreds of years, if not
    longer, if the assets aren’t fully depleted sooner.

    With this in mind, we’re in the chorus of those singing about the need to draft trusts
    for flexibility. Let’s consider these 14 recommendations for creating trusts that can
    bend like Gumby and change with the times.

    Read their commentary here.

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