Trust decanting is a technique used to modify the provisions of an existing irrevocable trust to react to changing circumstances that the settlor did not expect. This flexible and practical technique is gaining popularity, and many states have decanting statutes written into law. There are challenges whenever fiduciaries and advisers have to navigate through a patchwork of state-specific decanting regimes that are inconsistent. The Uniform Trust Decanting Act is a new piece of legislation that will attempt to combine the best aspects of decanting laws so that people will have a useful guide to use when decanting. This article is a preview of a much larger article on this topic that will be released in February. The full text of the Uniform Trust Decanting Act can be found here.
See Kristin Abati and Renat Lumpau, The Uniform Trust Decanting Act: New Opportunities Ahead, Wealth Management, December 18, 2015.
Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse for bringing this article to my attention.
