Thursday, August 16, 2012

Tying Strings on Trusts

"…of sound mind, good moral character and temperate financial habits."

Do you qualify? How do you define those "temperate financial habits?" No more than three credit cards? No home-equity loan? No junk bonds? Evidently the folks at Northern Trust understood the requirement well enough to decide on a distribution to a trust beneficiary. See Getting Heirs to Do Your Bidding.

Laura Sanders' survey of string-tying reminds us that modern testators and trustors really have to watch their language. For instance, must a beneficiary's "spouse" be of a particular gender? Do "descendants" include a child conceived with frozen sperm?

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