Ohio Trust Code and Its Impact on the Existing Law

Alan Newman (Associate Professor of Law, University of Akron School of Law) has recently published his article entitled The Uniform Trust Code: An Analysis of Ohio’s Version, 34 Ohio N.U. L. Rev. 135 (2008).

Here is the introduction to his article:

Shortly after the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws approved the Uniform Trust Code (the “UTC”) in August of 2000, members of the Estate Planning, Trust, and Probate Law (“EPTPL”) Section of the Ohio State Bar Association, and members of the Legal, Legislative, and Regulatory (“LLR”) Committee of the Ohio Bankers League, began studying it. In 2003, a joint committee of members of the EPTPL Section and the LLR Committee (the “Joint Committee”) was formed to continue that study. Over the next three years, the Joint Committee worked on a modified version of the UTC that resulted in the enactment in 2006 of House Bill 416, which includes the new Ohio Trust Code (the “OTC,” or the “Code”).

Prior to the OTC, trust law in Ohio included relatively few statutes and consisted primarily of case law that had developed in the usual common law fashion by which courts resolve disputes arising from the specific facts of the cases before them. The OTC addresses many issues that formerly were either not addressed by Ohio law or were addressed only in difficult to find case law. For the most part, the OTC codified existing law. In some respects, however, it has changed Ohio’s trust law. The purpose of this Article is to analyze the new OTC and its impact in Ohio, with a particular focus on the ways it has changed Ohio law and ways it differs from the UTC.