This U.S. Trust Has a Foreign Beneficiary!This U.S. Trust Has a Foreign Beneficiary!

With increasing global mobility of high-net-worth individuals and families, it’s becoming more common for a U.S. fiduciary to be the trustee of a trust that’s governed by the laws of a U.S. state and has non-U.S. beneficiaries. Consider a retired, non-U.S. married couple that immigrates to the United States and has children who remain non-U.S. individuals. If that couple sets up a typical core estate plan with a trust and U.S. trustee, on their deaths, there would likely be one or more discretionary trusts for their non-U.S. children. Another circumstance could arise when a non-U.S. individual settles a gift trust with a U.S. trustee having U.S. children as its beneficiaries and non-U.S. children as contingent beneficiaries in the event ...