Wouldn’t she make a perfect bride for this guy though?
From what I can gather, the money was left to her by her Grandfather, possibly with her father, either directly, or through a private company, as trustee.
As trustee, her father has a fiduciary duty to her as beneficiary. He doesn’t have the right to redistribute the assets among other family members - especially if he made undervalued transfers between the trusts.
This is just from a casual glance at the facts, however, I could be wrong.
I don’t know how you’d feel if your grandparents left you something, and your parents sold it or transferred it to other people.
- Bubba.
Now I see that ENugent has got in before me and basically made the same points - I really should read all the replies.
- Bubba.
I think a lesson to be learned here is that if you wish to leave a significant amount of money to a minor after your death, the trustee should be a neutral third party.
Gus it’s my understanding that all trusts have a trustee managing it. So, the trust is set up and there’s a named person to manage said trust.
and if my “Law & ORders” are right ( 
), the trustee is allowed to withdraw funds on behalf of the minors should they deem it advisable to do so (to pay for an education for example, or assist w/living or medical expenses). but the funds are held in trust, and are not, in fact, the trustee’s themselves to play with.
now, onto the subject of ‘if it was dad’s money to start with’, let’s ask the lawyers here:
trusts (where the person setting up the trust is still alive and managing it for the other person), are generally also some way of avoiding a tax obligation, correct??? so that monies placed in trust for family members aren’t continued to be considered income or something of that nature - if this is true, what’s the resulting tax issue should the trustee remove money from the trust and distribute it to others outside the terms of the trust?
Exactly! And if that trust does not have that sort of thing spelled out, it is a lousy trust. Assuming your trustee will do what you want because you think he is a blood relative or a good guy is naive at best. When LOYS (relatively speaking) money is involved it is a case of very poor judgement on the establisher’s of the trusts part. IMO. My point exactly.
A trust can and should be locked down to the “Nat’s Ass” on what should be allowed and safe guards put in place, third neutral parties come to mind don’t they?
When it comes to money, and the amount soars, who do you trust and how much?
Who, not, should you. I don’t think you should. Period dot.
If it was not made clear in the trust as to what he could and could not do, then a jury is the way to go. ((( Yeah right… I have been on several juries and would rather take my chances with a coin toss. I have better odds if I have the money the jury and plaintiff think of as “Too Much”. ))))) Right and wrong, fair and unfair, $1.00 or 100 Billion. Does not make a difference.
How was the trust set up? Was he authorized to use “Judgement”? Was he constrained to “GOOD” judgement? What was written? Maybe Grand Pappy was an idiot.
Okay, that negates the possibility of him being an idiot about trusts? If he was not and his kid is just a plain old rich crook, I still do not see what you are getting to in relation to what I was saying? Yepper, he died. So?
There’s always a trustee left in charge of a trust (AFAIK), and it’s pretty common to name a family member, trusted friend of the family, etc to that post (think executor of a will). So, it’s not necessarily that anyone was ‘stupid’ about naming the person, just ended up trusting the wrong person. AFter all, if you can’t trust the kid’s father to do right by her, who would you suggest?
ok - missed your other post - the “Granpa died” post was in relation to speculation that the trust was originally daddy’s $$.
to recap:
we don’t know if the trust was set up by daddy or by granddad. If it was granddad, the money was indeed hers, just as if she’d earned it - there’s no realistic difference in the sense of ownership between property inherited vs. property earned. If it was daddy who set up the trust, I suppose there’s some level of ‘yea, the $$ wasn’t really hers’, but I’m still curious relative to the question I posed - tax issues etc - if the trust is set up for the daughter, and daddy takes $$ out and spends it on people other than daughter, then what’s the legal situation re: $$ - trust was set up (and avoided taxes) as a gift to her, if he redistributes it in other manner, does he now have to claim that $$ as taxable income?
I read your comment above about ‘gee they must be pretty dumb to have a trustee’ - I could have misread it/misinterpreted it, so I was explaining that all trusts have a trustee. It’s not uncommon for a close relative to be named to that position, and frankly unless you (generic) have evidence to the contrary, one would generally assume that ‘daddy’ would keep daughter’s best interests in mind. I dont’ think it was terribly unreasonable for granddad to assume (if this is what happened) that dad was a reasonable choice for trustee. (unless dad was demonstrably a jerk/theif etc.)
Bottom line to me is that a trust has specific provisions, generally speaking the money is held ‘in trust’ for the named person, and withdrawing $$ and giving it to other people is generally considered to be wrong. (yes, even if the person is the heir to the Hyatt fortune).
I’d assume that teams of lawyers drew up the trust and did it in a reasonable fashion (given no evidence of the contrary - some one who was that wealthy would have been unlikely to attempt something of the sort on their own).
For example - I’m the Director of a company. I recieve monies, deposit them, and sign checks, etc . there’s rules of banking, rules of my organization, accountants galore, board members etc. and still if I were a baaaaad person, I could actually write checks to me, deposit checks to me and abscond w/funds. Yes, I’d be caught at it w/in time, but I could do it. What I assume has happened here is that the girl is approaching the age where she’s going to take over the account (she was a teen when she made Air Force One), and at that point, she became aware of the withdrawals and has attempted to get an accounting of them.
If you’re saying that now we can see that he was a poor choice in trustee (assuming that the $$'s didn’t go to her benefit - for example - if the $$ went to her mom to pay for a roof over their heads, that may be appropriate); we’re in agreement.
If you’re saying the old man was stupid to have selected his son as trustee, I’d say you’d have to demonstrate that the old man would have reason to know that in the future his son would turn out to be a theif.
We’re almost there wring.
I say that a trust that allows a person to monkey with it in anyway not spelled out specifically and not checked by a third party every time is a silly trust.
Anything over $600,000. has tax problems and they will have to be paid as they go along AFAIK… So if any single trust is over 600k, then it must be messed with to the extent that the interest must be dealt with, if not dispersed annually to keep it under a 600K trust and of course the interest is taxable.
My point all along is that any trust for some one else that is set up so that ONE person has unmonitored access is silly. Yes, having relatives as trustee’s, is usually good, but there needs to be outside or at least third party or dual control if the amount has to be manipulated in any way after the originator has died.
IMO, it should have been spelled out carefully. And those kinds of people (( RICH to the INTH degree )))) should have done it .
YMMV
Here are the court briefs (in pdf).
“Pursuant to the terms of a trust settled by A. N. Pritzker in 1961, a so-called “PG Trust” was established for each of the grandchildren of A.N. Pritzker. The trustees of each of these trusts were authorized to distribute the income of the trusts as they deemed necessary, for the health, support or maintenance of the beneficiary. The trust’s principal may be distributed after the beneficiary has attained the age of 30, and then to the extent that the trustees, in heir sole discretion, determine that it is appropriate to do so.”
There are other trusts mentioned. The brief further claims that Daddy and company did not tell anyone “who was capable of acting, on their behalf, any information about transactions in or with respect to any of the trusts established for the plaintiff’s benefit.”
What confuses me is that I thought FOXNews was supposed to be right-wing.
Back when I was a teenager, I’d rant about the rich wanting to be richer, saying the same things as Straka like “[She] didn’t earn any of this money,” or “You can’t tell me there isn’t enough to go around – or that there’s not enough [for her] to live comfortably on for the rest of her life,” people called me a bleeding-heart commie liberal.
Gus - you say ‘oversite’ as if it were an easy thing. If you have an untrustworthy person in charge, it’s not that difficult to do bad things, even with oversite.
I believe a certain amount of ‘oversite’ is standard, but there’s potential for abuse even then (especially if the person ‘overseeing’ is assisting or paid off). It doesn’t have to be that grandpa was a dunderhead. Yes, in retrospect, it does seem to be that he chose poorly, but day-am, you should be able to trust that your son won’t rip off his daughter.
and, thanks to brachy for determining that it was indeed grandpa’s trust. Ergo all this bitching about she shouldn’t be suing etc, it isn’t her money etc. is balderdash. The trust apparently was set up by grandpa (as I suspected since he’d died semi recently) for her. Daddykins had no more right to that money than I do. (tho’ I do accept donations)
Note : I am a Lawyer in Australia who specialises in taxation and asset protection. Our firm utilises trusts extensively - however I am not sure how the US treats trusts.
First, a quick run down on trusts.
Trusts as we know them today were developed about 4-500 ago in the UK as a method of protecting the assets of the nobility (generally land) from wastage by the next generation.
A trust requires three elements. A trustee, property and a beneficiary. Often there is a fourth element, the principal - who controls the appointment and removal of the trustee. Usually, trusts are either established during the lifetime of the testator (inter vivos trusts) or upon his/her death under a will (testamentary trusts).
Generally an inter vivos trust will be a discretionary, or ‘family’ trust, where there is a range of beneficiaries, usually the children/grandchildren of the testator, who are entitled to distributions of capital and/or income.
There are a range of tax benefits that can be utilised under a trust structure, but really, the major benefit of a trust is in asset protection - assets in a discretionary trust are generally highly protected from attack by creditors etc, as a beneficiary does not have an interest in the trust assets, rather it has a right to be considered by the trustee.
The duties and obligations of a trustee are enshrined in both the trust deed (in this case it could be the will), the common law, and statutory regulations. Generally a trustee has an obligation to consider the beneficiaries at all times in his/her dealings.
Regarding your tax question, wring In Australia, income distributions from a trust are taxed on distribution, at the beneficiaries tax rate. That is why, if the trust is producing income, that income is distributed amongst beneficiaries to get the best tax position. That doesn’t necessarily mean that each beneficiary will receive the distribution, rather the accounts record loans etc. and the income is applied towards education etc.
Oh well, I probably haven’t answered any questions, and I have gone on a bit, but from what I can gather from talking to clients , trusts are pretty misunderstood, and an elementary run down can be helpful. Let me know if you have any other quesitons.
- Bubba.
thanks, foxy what I was getting at with the tax issue was if the trust had been created by daddykins as a means of dispursing assets/income. however, it now has been made clear that grandpa created the trust for granddaughter, put daddy in charge, and daddy decided that $$ should go to other family members.
as far as I know, however that alone isn’t necessarily a violation, as I said before, it would (generally I believe) be appropriate to make payments to mom for example for school expenses or other things that may come up. However w/the amounts involved and the short time involved I doubt that it’s that benign.
but thanks bubba 
I 'preciate the effort
You guys are making sense, and starting to change my opinion as the facts come to light.
Please make it stop, it hurts.
Why are so many people assuming she’s greedy and doing this so she’ll never have to work? We don’t know if her ambition is to lie on a chaise on the Riviera, eating chocolate-dipped strawberries served by a Hugh Jackman look…alike…wearing a…:::ahem:::Lost my train of thought there!
Anyway, it’s entirely possible that she wants the money so she can invest it. She’s an actress; she could form a production company. That would create work for a lot of people. Or she may want to buy a hotel or two outright, and develop them, or form a different business, or fund someone else’s. Grandpa may set up the funds (she’s one of twelve grandchildren) with the expectation that they would be used in this manner, not spent frivolously.
She wouldn’t do these things at age 18, probably, but after she’s finished college. But she may be out of college by the time this is settled. At any rate, while she plans for this, she can’t let them dick around with the money grandpa left her, not these “other family members”.
LOYS?
I think it’s either Looking Over Your Shoulder or Lifeform Optimized for Yardwork and Sabotage.
IANAA so YMMV.
It’s the $5 in punitive damages that make me think she is a spoiled brat.