For tax and nontax reasons, estate planning clients often establish trusts for their beneficiaries. Family, financial or legal circumstances may subsequently change and cause the settlor, trustees or beneficiaries to view the trust’s original terms as unnecessary, unappealing or even damaging to a beneficiary’s interests. A beneficiary’s personal situation (tenuous marriage, financial irresponsibility, substance abuse) might call for postponement or elimination of a scheduled distribution, a disabled beneficiary may benefit from inclusion of a special needs trust, revisions could be advisable because of a missed allocation of generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax exemption or changes to the tax laws, and so on.
Such revisions have traditionally been accomplished through a judicial reformation or modification of the trust terms. “Decanting” offers an efficient and appealing alternative to that process.
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