Article on Chasing Venue for Trust-Related Matters

Jocelyn M. Borowsky et al. recently published an Article entitled, Chasing Jurisdictional Unicorns: Capturing the Venue of Choice for Trust-Related Matters Can be Elusive, Trusts & Estates (Nov. 2016). Provided below is an abstract of the Article:

Over the years, our world has become significantly more migratory. Until relatively recently, many Americans were born, grew up, lived and ultimately died in the same limited geographic area. Today, the average American moves approximately a dozen times over his lifetime. Not surprisingly, this increased geographic mobility has led to an increased mobility of wealth, in particular, the trusts that individuals create or from which they benefit. It isn’t unusual for the place of administration of a trust to change during its existence or for different aspects of a trust’s administration to take place in multiple jurisdictions (sometimes referred to as “multijurisdictional trusts”).

In this era of multijurisdictional trusts, establishing a trust’s jurisdictional situs with certainty is desirable but often elusive. The jurisdictional situs of a trust is the state where courts have jurisdiction and are most likely to exercise jurisdiction to hear matters concerning the trust.

Because a multijurisdictional trust may have beneficiaries, fiduciaries or trust property located in several different states, a trust may have more than one jurisdictional situs. As state trust laws can vary, parties may seek to obtain exclusive jurisdiction over a trust for all matters. Can parties actually achieve exclusive jurisdiction, and if so, how?

Generally we can determine a court’s jurisdiction over a trust matter by analyzing the following factors: (1) the presence of an agreement of the contracting parties; (2) the administrative situs of the trust; (3) state statutory authority; and (4) timely commencement of litigation.