How can you use a living trust to protect your assets for the rest of your life and beyond: Nashville Court of Appeals Case, June 23, 2015

Did you parents establish a living trust to benefit you and  your brothers and sisters? Do you disagree with a court ordered distribution of the trust? You may have a right to appeal an improper distribution in West Palm Beach probate court. Check out this recent case out of the Court of Appeals in Nashville to learn more.

Living Trust

• Are you a beneficiary of a trust that was set up during the donor’s lifetime to benefit you and others?
• This may be a living trust.
• A living trust is a specific type of revocable trust.
• Often time’s parents in West Palm Beach will establish these to protect their children and assets.
• So what happens when all the kids grow up?
• Experienced West Palm Beach probate litigators know that you are not allowed to have a non-charitable trust go on forever.
• So most of these living trusts will have provisions that when a child (or the children) reach a certain age of maturity the trusts will terminate.
• Upon termination the trustee will divide up the assets.
• You may not agree with how the West Palm Beach trustee decides the corpus or body (i.e. trust funds) should be divided.
• Do you know your rights?
• You may be able to challenge the distribution in probate court.
• Check out this case out of the Court of Appeals in Tennessee that shows the intricacies of challenging a trustee’s good faith division of assets.

Goza v. Suntrust Bank

• Believe it or not this was the seventh case to come out of one family’s estate and living trust!
• During her life the decedent had established a living trust to provide for herself and her only son.
• The mother had amended the trust several times and organized it so that should her son survive her, some portion would go to him while the rest would go to a charitable trust to help the mentally handicapped.
• The current proceedings arose from intestate heirs claiming that the charitable trust is invalid and that they were entitled to take under the intestacy statutes of the State.
• The Attorney General even intervened to protect the public from losing the trust funds!
• Lucky for the mentally handicapped the appeals court dismissed the claim and found that the trust is valid.

Want to learn more about charitable trusts, living trusts and the rule against perpetuities?

Check out the entire case by clicking here.