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Old September 2, 2010, 10:16 AM   #35
Bartholomew Roberts
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Join Date: June 12, 2000
Location: Texas and Oklahoma area
Posts: 8,462
Quote:
Are you saying that if law changes that has an effect on trusts that you have formed in the past, you contact each and everyone you have done work for to correct the new (created) error?
I think you are confusing two separate issues. One is if there is a court issue and a trust is found invalid. In this case, the law hasn't changed. The trust was never valid to begin with. At best, maybe the trust was in a grey area of the law that the ruling clarified. In that case, I would indeed contact every single client I'd done that work for and update the trusts because if I know that a trust I have drafted was declared invalid by a court and was never legal and I know I have a lot of other clients with that same trust, I would be risking my business as well as creating good grounds for a malpractice/ethics claim.

Quicken on the other hand doesn't have that problem.They make it very clear they aren't offering you legal advice and advise you to get an attorney. If one of their trusts is declared invalid, they don't have any risk - and in any case there is a better than average chance that it isn't the form that is the problem; but the way the person who filled it out tried to use it (because not being legal experts, they didn't know any better).

The second issue you mention above (the legislature invalidating trusts that were completely legal by changing the law) rarely happens because people get upset when the laws regarding property ownership are invalidated on a widespread basis. However, if it did happen, I'd probably send a letter out to all of my clients (even those I had not done trusts for) highlighting the change and encouraging them to update their trusts - because that generates more work for me (again hypothetical).
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