Read more about the article The Risk Math of a Fully Foreign Trust: What to Check Before You Send a Client Offshore

The Risk Math of a Fully Foreign Trust: What to Check Before You Send a Client Offshore

A fully foreign trust may offer powerful asset protection—but it also creates guaranteed annual reporting obligations that can produce six-figure penalties even when no additional tax is owed. Before recommending an offshore structure, CPAs, wealth managers, and financial advisors should understand the true cost of Forms 3520 and 3520-A, the importance of an independent offshore trustee, and why many clients are better served by a hybrid Bridge Trust® that defers foreign compliance until it is actually needed. This article provides a practical framework for evaluating both the financial and structural risks before sending a client offshore.

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Read more about the article The OBBBA Didn’t Solve Your Estate Problem. Here’s What It Missed.

The OBBBA Didn’t Solve Your Estate Problem. Here’s What It Missed.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act raised the federal estate tax exemption to $15 million per person — $30 million for a married couple. Most successful couples saw that number and assumed the estate planning conversation was over. It isn’t. The OBBBA left one critical gap completely untouched: the GST exemption is not portable between spouses. Whatever exemption the first spouse doesn’t allocate before death is gone permanently. For a married couple at $12 million today, that gap costs their family $14.6 million by the time the second spouse dies. Here’s the math — and why the Dynasty Bridge Trust is the right structure for couples who think they’re below the threshold.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Does Your Offshore Trust Actually “Activate” When You Need It? What the Critics Get Wrong — and What Your Instrument Should Say

Most offshore trusts don’t activate when you actually need them. Here’s what the activation mechanism should say in your governing instrument — and where critics of hybrid structures get the analysis wrong

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Read more about the article What United States v. Huckaby Actually Teaches About Asset Protection

What United States v. Huckaby Actually Teaches About Asset Protection

United States v. Huckaby (2026): What the Case Actually Held. United States v. Huckaby, No. 2:23-cv-00587-DAD-JDP (E.D. Cal. Mar. 2, 2026), is a federal collection case in which a self-settled Nevada spendthrift trust failed to protect California real property from a federal judgment lien under 28 U.S.C. §3201(a). The court applied California law to the creditor question — not Nevada’s — because the property sits in California. Under California law the trust was void as a self-settled shield, because the same people were its settlors, trustees, and beneficiaries.

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