Great Moments in Trust Advertising

Ad in the Bronxville Review, July 30, 1936:

Name a Corporate Trustee – But How Big?

The New York Times' latest Wealth Section includes a welcome column on living trusts (if you ignore the sidebar claiming that revocable trusts must file annual tax returns) as well as a plug for naming a corporate trustee in order to avoid family dissension.

The plug comes with a caution from attorney William D. Zabel: Don't name a local bank.

Why does Zabel think trustors should go big bank? He feels hometown banks, attorneys and accountants are tempted to favor some family members over others. The Times offers as example a situation where an out-of-state son-in-law and his wife have spent years battling "the locals" and her hometown siblings.

Small town trust departments aren't always ideal, but the services of megabanks also have bitter critics. On balance, isn't a capable hometown bank a reasonable choice for nonbillionaires?

A Plug For Revocable Trusts

Two morals may be drawn from this Wealth Matters column:

1. If you want to change your name, do it right. Otherwise your ability to exercise a power of attorney may be compromised.

2. Despite –and also because of – the popularity of durable powers of attorney, creating a revocable trust may be the more prudent way to go.

The Law's Delays

2013. Contested Inheritance Goes on Sabbatical. 

Less than a year before her death at 93 in 2012, Geraldine Webber largely disinherited the beneficiaries of her earlier will in favor of a young policeman. The resulting will contest (a trust contest, really) is unusual in that the aggrieved beneficiaries are charities, not relatives. For an earlier newspaper report and a link to a video of Webber executing her will, see Will Contest Goes to the Video.

When will the case go to trial? Not soon. The judge has approved a one-year sabbatical, perhaps to give the contending parties more time to reach a settlement.

1913. The Game

Big-time college football contests drawing vast crowds are now commonplace. A century ago, nothing compared to The Game. When Yale played Harvard, even justice was delayed.

The New York Sun, November 21, 1913

Could Ryan O’Neal Take Back His Farah Fawcett Portrait?

Warhol: Farah Fawcett

Andy Warhol silkscreened two copies of his photo-portrait of Farah Fawcett, one for her, the other, apparently, for Ryan O'Neal. After the couple broke up, O'Neal seems to have given his copy to Farah. After she died, he took it back. Does the Warhol belong to him, or did it pass from Fawcett's trust to a museum? The lawssuit we mentioned two years ago is finally going to trial.

Fight Over Photographer Bert Stern's Estate

Best known for his photos of Marilyn Monroe, celebrity photographer Bert Stern died at age 83 last June. In 1997 he made a will benefiting his three children from his first marriage (to the ballerina Allegra Kent) and placing his archive of photographs in a foundation. In 2010 he made a new will, pouring his estate into a living trust. We don't know the beneficiaries of the private trust, but presumably they include the "secret wife" who says she married Stern in 2009. Predictably, his children are questioning the second will.

The dispute caught my eye, taking me back to the days when The Merrill Anderson Company occupied a converted carriage house at 142 East 39th Street and Bert Stern was our next-door neighbor.

One morning as I arrived for work, three tall, thin young women, dressed to the nines, were standing on the sidewalk with a large picnic basket. As I entered 142, a Rolls pulled up to the curb. Bert Stern's models, off to a fashion shoot.

142 and 140 East 39th Street today 

Note that the floors do not line up.We had

lots of stairs.

When Stern left 140 East 39th for presumably more splendid quarters, The Merrill Anderson Company, bursting at the seams, rented the top two floors. Had to break through the building walls for access.

Bill Stafford, our brilliant tax editor, and I took over Bert's top-floor studio. Bill's desk was at one end, mine was at the other, near the fireplace and adjoining kitchen.

Come to think of it, that's about as close as I ever came to the Mad Men lifestyle.

Will Contest Goes to the Video

Comfortably off and living in a waterfront home, a women in her 90s planned to leave everything to charity until she met a handsome, helpful police sergeant. Seven months before she died, she executed a new will – a trust, actually – leaving the sergeant the bulk of her estate.

Predictable result: a will contest, which now takes a new twist in the form of a video of the signing.

Was the elderly woman competent to reshape her estate plan? You can form your own opinion. This Portsmouth Herald article includes a link to a clip from the video.

The Mystery of Joe Paterno's Will

Like many 21st-century wills, that of the late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno is uninformative. He had a living trust, so his will simply disposes of tangible personal property and sweeps any remaining assets into the trust.

Because the terms of living trusts usually remain private, we may never know much about Paterno's estate plan.

The mystery: Why did the Paterno family nevertheless seek to keep the will secret?

Ameriprise, an Eager Trustee

Ameriprise wants new trust business. And existing trust business, too. "If you have an existing trust," says this Ameriprise video, "consider the advantages of moving it to Ameriprise Financial."

Should other banks and trust companies be doing more to generate successor-trustee business?

Farrah Fawcett's Living Trust

As Jim Gust and I have written countless times, revocable living trusts have their pros and cons.

One pro: Because living trusts avoid probate, they don't go on public record like a will. The terms of the trust usually remain confidential.

One con: Revocable trusts must be funded. Countless revocable trusts prove worthless because they are empty; the trustors never retitled their securities and other assets.

Neither truism seems to apply to Farrah Fawcett's living trust, last amended two years before her death. The trust terms did not remain confidential. You can read them here. And the "Schedule A" that might be expected to detail the assets placed in trust merely says, in effect, "everything." All Fawcett's personal effects, including artworks. All stocks, bonds and mutual funds. All business interests. All real estate.

Is this how revocable trusts work in California? What about other States?

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Fawcett's estate planning draws attention because she left her art collection to the University of Texas. That university is now suing Ryan O'Neal,  claiming ownership of both the silk-screen portraits of Fawcett created by Andy Warhol. O'Neal contends that his friend Warhol created one of the portraits for Farrah and the other – which hangs in his bedroom – for him. 

A Corporate Trustee That Brought Wealth to Life

Change and optimism were in the air half a century ago, in the fall of 1960. Hanover Bank's living trust ad captured the spirit of the time.

Johnny Carson's Living Trust

Ed McMahon: Oh All-Seeing One, the answer is, "A living trust, stupid!"

Carnac the Magnificant: Obvious, you long-toothed Leatherneck. The question is, "How does television's most illustrious celebrity keep his estate plan private?"

Because Johnny Carson's foundation had to file a Form 990-PF, The Smoking Gun learned the foundation has become Hollywood's best-funded charitable organization by far, thanks to a $156 million transfer from the late entertainer's trust.

Little else is known about Carson's estate. "There has never been a public accounting … so there is no way of knowing its total value, beneficiaries, or what percentage the $156 million represents."

When Revocable Trusts Invaded New York

New York State still resisted the idea of living trusts as will substitutes when Earl MacNeill wrote "Making the Most of Your Estate," published in 1957. Perhaps the State had mellowed two years later, when Chemical ran this living trust ad.


Scripophily.com hosts a detailed listing of the births, matings and disappearances of New York banks. (Some national history, too.) Turns out 1959 was the year Chemical acquired New York Trust. Ten years later the NY Trust name vanished. Eventually Chemical acquired Chase and assumed the Chase name. Today, the widow's grandchildren would be receiving their trust distributions from JPMorgan.

Trust-Based Estate Plans Threatened?

Want to know what's in my will? No way! Long as I'm alive and kicking, the terms of my will are private. Also, I can rewrite my will as often as I want and various beneficiaries won't know if they're in or out of the current version. (Brooke Astor changed her will more than 30 times, according to the Daily News.)

But my will doesn't matter much, does it? Mine is a modern estate plan, based on a living trust agreement. Are the terms of the trust agreement as private as the provisions of my will? Apparently not, at least not if I live in Kentucky:

[M]any laypersons who create revocable living trusts as will substitutes might be shocked to learn that a trustee has a duty to inform contingent beneficiaries of their potential interests, given the understanding of many settlors that so long as they are living and competent the trust assets remain essentially under their control and that they may freely change their mind about beneficiaries' interests . But if our trust statutes are out of touch with modern policy or with the expectations of today's community, it is the legislature's task to amend the statutes, not this Court's role to re-write them.

Hat tip to The Wills, Trusts and Estates Prof for spotlighting this case.