Centerville, TX Estate Planning Law Firms & Lawyers

The duties are set forth in Rhode Island statute and case law. You have been invested with great authority by the court and need to have counsel guiding you.

"Customary" doesn't matter much; the maker of a trust can say what he or she wants to say in terms of who takes. The question is a little confusing, but I'm gathering that one child of the trust-maker has passed away, and the trust calls for distribution to the deceased child's children, rather than to the deceased child's spouse. In my experience, yes, that is the more common distribution, keeping the wealth in the lineal family descent. Marriage is a little too dicey these days for many people.

Yes. You can set up multiple living trusts. However, what I have done in the past is to set up one living trust, and then have multiple irrevocable sub trusts. Each sub trust provides that upon a sale of the asset (i.e. real property) that the trust owns, unless a 1031 exchange occurs, the Irrevocable sub trust is terminated. The sole beneficiary of the irrevocable sub trust is the primary revocable living trust. If you (i.e. the trustee) want to buy one or more other properties, you just create a new irrevocable sub trust. I first began using this method with a client who owned multiple preschools, and the real property upon which they were located. Even with insurance, there is substantial risk of liability based upon the acts of employees, or just rumors about the school. In the 1980's commercial trustees lobbied for changes in the liability of trustees of California trust estates following changes in the law that required remediation of contaminated real property in California. Commercial trustees found themselves with unlimited liability when they merely held title to a parcel of real property that had been leased to a company that caused the contamination, or upon which contamination had migrated. There were others who were responsible for the contamination, but in many cases the companies not longer existed or did not have the resources to perform the remediation and filed bankruptcy.