An irrevocable trust used to be truly irrevocable, but now, twenty-five states allow you to change the terms of an old trust through a process called decanting. The trustee of the trust must be the one to initiate the decanting, rewriting the terms of the trust to distribute assets from it into a new trust with all new terms. Thirteen states have passed decanting laws within the last five years in hopes to compete for trust business. South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Delaware are among the states with the most flexible decanting laws, but even they have their differences. As life progresses, old trust terms often do not keep up with the times, and decanting can be an important tool to help families preserve the intent of an original trust.
See Ashlea Ebeling, Old Money, New Bottle: Decant If You Don’t Like the Terms of an Old Trust, Forbes, March 16, 2017.
Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.
