Article on North Dakota’s Adoption of the Uniform Trust Code

Kirsten Franzen (Assistant Attorney General, North Dakota) and Bradley Myers (Randy H. Lee Professor of Law, University of North Dakota School of Law) recently published their article entitled Improving the Law Through Codification: Adoption of the Uniform Trust Code in North Dakota, 86 N.D. L. Rev. 321 (2010). The abstract of the article is below:

While trusts have existed under the law for centuries, the common use of trusts for estate planning, probate avoidance, and wealth management dates back only a couple of decades. The increase in trust usage has, unfortunately, also served to expose gaps, opaqueness, and inconsistencies that developed under the common law. As the first generation to make liberal use of trusts in estate planning begins to pass away, courts will likely have to regularly wrestle with questions of trust interpretation, implementation, and correction. On August 3, 2000, the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) approved the Uniform Trust Code (UTC). The ULC undertook drafting of the UTC in order to codify the various common law rules that applied to trusts, to clarify an area of law considered “thin” and “fragmentary,” and to provide states with a body of law that was “precise, comprehensive, and easily accessible.” North Dakota adopted the UTC in 2007. This article discusses the development of the UTC, reviews the history of trust law in North Dakota, and examines the adoption of the modified UTC’s treatment of trusts under North Dakota law. Although North Dakota law is not a hotbed of trust conflict, the UTC should bring additional clarity to situations where conflict arises.