Article on Used Not Only as Directed: Michigan’s Adaptation of the Uniform Directed Trust Act

James P. Spica recently published an Article entitled, Used Not Only as Directed: Michigan’s Adaptation of the Uniform Directed Trust Act, 64 Wayne L. Rev. 339-402 (2019). Provided below is an introduction of the Article.

On November 11, 2017, the Council of the Probate and Estate Planning Section of the State Bar of Michigan approved a legislative proposal developed by the Council’s Divided and Directed Trusteeships ad hoc Committee. The approved proposal introduces two innovations to the Michigan Trust Code (MTC): it imports the Uniform Directed Trust Act (UDTA), and it provides a statutory template for a more radical scheme of fiduciary coordination that may be styled divided trusteeship. The author has written elsewhere about divided trusteeships. The present Article focuses on the proposal’s version of the UDTA, the Michigan UDTA (MUDTA): Part II of the Article describes how enactment of the MUDTA will affect the treatment of powers to direct trustees under the MTC; Part III describes how the MUDTA differs from the UDTA.