Trust-decanting gains favor. In a recent WSJ.com Wealth Advisor article, trust decanting is discussed and explained. Decanting is “pouring” one trust into another new and effective trust to solve problems in the old trust. Many of our trusts include decanting tools, for those cases where future issues, complexities or problems may arise after creation of the trust. It can take a long time to untangle a problem in a trust, and the article mentions some problems that were created when people rushed to protect their wealth when tax rules were being revamped in 2012. It turned out some of those moves were mistakes, and an increasingly popular way to fix them is through trust decanting. The technique, which involves moving assets from an old trust to a new one, isn’t permitted everywhere but is finding favor in more states these days.
