Supreme Court of Wyoming – Son Sues Family Trust for Injuries from Feeding Cattle. Is Your Family Trust Insured Properly?

One popular way to plan an estate in West Palm Beach is the pour over   will whereby the estate’s assets pour into a trust set up during the decedent’s lifetime. Usually your home and accounts will be re-titled to the trust so what happens when your gardener gets injured who do they sue you or the trust? Are you properly insured for the items that are held in trust, did you even consider that someone can sue your trust after someone gets hurt on your property?

• Keep in mind that there was a reason you paid for homeowners all those years, with property comes liability. Did you think that changed once the property was held in trust?
• Are your trust assets vulnerable to creditors in a West Palm Beach Court? If trusts made assets exempt from creditors who would not have one?
• Just because someone is injured on your property does not mean you are liable, you also have to owed them some duty of care and failed to perform that level of care while they were on your land (and invited to be there).

Wyoming Court holds trust did not breach its duty of care:

• A son of an elderly couple came to their ranch to feed the family cattle as he routinely did. The couples home was held in trust, most likely for some pour over will style estate plan.
• On March 23, 2010 the son was horribly injured after he fell, landed on his head and on the bed of a sleigh, suffering a fracture in his spine. He sued the trust that held the ranch for negligence alleging he was an employee of the ranch.
• When I first read this I couldnt believe it a son suing the family farm? But keep in mind the family was likely insured (the case does not specify, usually this type of information is kept away from a jury and is not relevant) so it was not going to take the family farm.
• Here is a quandry, what if he had won? His plaintiffs attorney likely works on contingency, he gets a % of whatever he gets the son, so the son will likely take whatever insurance will tender (the limits of coverage) but not more (i.e. forcing a levy of the home and a sale of his elderly parents homestead) … can the attorney make him go for the whole enchilada so that he can get his full fee? Suing the family is not easy.

Want to read more? Check out the case of Johnson v. Dale C. and Helen W. Johnson Family Revocable Trust , which was decided on March 24, 2015 in the Supreme Court of Wyoming. Just click here to read the whole opinion.