Florida Estate Planning Lawyer Blog

While a Gun Trust can provide guidance to your family and friends on how to transfer the legal ownership of Title I and Title II firearms, some individuals do not have anyone to leave their firearms to or want them to provide other benefits. The NRA has a program where one can exchange unused firearms collections for an income for life. The process involves selling the firearms and exchanging the revenue for a lifetime annuity for you or your spouse. They accomplish this though an action. The first of these auctions has already taken place and sold over 600 firearms. The next auction is expected to have a similar amount of firearms. I have spoken to several individuals who participated in the process and they felt that many of the firearms were sold for far more than they expected. (Some were in line and some were less than expected, but overall they were happy with the results).

If you are interested in finding out more about this to donate to the NRA or create an income stream for life, contact the NRA at http://www.nrafff.com

Florida Gun Trusts are not the same as a standard Revocable or Living Trust.

We are getting more and more so called Gun Trusts that have been prepared by lawyers in Florida and other states that are nothing more than a traditional revocable trust with a few definitions thrown in to discuss the National Firearms Act.

The biggest problem with these trust is that they do not protect your family in the event you die or become incapacitated. If your trust talks about income and real estate or does not seem to be specific for firearms, you may want to have it reviewed by a Gun Trust Lawyer to see if your trust instructs your family or friends to break the law and subject themselves to the penalties of the NFA.

Not all trusts are created the same, if you think you have a NFA Firearms trust and it does not contain our copyright it is not our trust.

Creating a Florida Revocable Trust is a job that most Florida Estate Planning Lawyers are capable of but the process of avoiding Florida Probate does not end there. Once the Florida Revocable Trust has been created it must then be funded with the client's assets. Without proper funding all of the assets that should have been in the trust will pass through Florida Probate costing heirs extra money in taxes and fees.

In order to fund your Florida Revocable Trust properly, you need to transfer ownership of your assets into the name of the trust. Personal property can be transferred using a document called a General Assignment or Assignment of Personal Effects. Real property is a little more complex because it requires executing a new deed transferring the property from your name as an individual to the name of the trust. Institutions with which you have bank and brokerage accounts usually require a showing that your trust exists and that it is your wish to have these accounts transferred. A Certificate of Trust is a document that provides proof of the existence of your trust and is usually given to the client in the living trust package he receives from his Florida Estate Planning Attorney.

Forgetting or neglecting to fund your trust is something you wouldn't want to do after going to all the trouble to create a trust in the first place. Even if you initially funded the trust with assets there are many cases where people have acquired a significant amount of assets later and never transferred them to the trust. If you would like assistance in creating a revocable living trust or an assessment of your existing trust contact a Florida Revocable Trust Lawyer or Jacksonville Estate Planning Lawyer today!

When a Florida Trust is created, the creator of the trust designates a trustee to monitor the trust. There is great responsibility that comes with being the trustee because this individual, or group of individuals handles the distributions to the beneficiaries according to the terms of the trust document. The terms may place numerous restrictions on the distributions made to beneficiaries or the trust may give broad discretion to the trustee to make the distributions. In addition, Florida law places additional requirements on a trustee that may not be apparent from the reading of the document. Circumstances can arise where a trustee wishes to resign their position as trustee.

In order to resign your position as trustee in Florida, you must comply with Florida statutory law. Florida Statute § 736.0705 governs the resignation of a trustee. It says that a trustee may resign if at least 30 days notice is given to all qualified beneficiaries, the settlor (creator) of the trust if still living, and all co-trustees. A trustee can also petition the court for resignation and then may be relieved of their position with the courts approval.

This does not mean that the trustee will escape liability for acts done before the trustee’s resignation. If the resigning trustee has committed some breach of their duties to the beneficiaries, they can still be held accountable for those acts. For more information on your Florida Revocable Trust or if you have any trust administration questions contact a Florida Trust Lawyer today.

Firearms and Florida estate planning has become a hot topic. Many of us own individual firearms and would like to have a beneficiary for them. While I prefer to deal with this using a NFA Firearms Trust there are times when individuals have other firearms or items subject to the NFA that they do not want to transfer into a NFA Trust. I was recently asked by a Virginia lawyer for some ideas on provisions to include in a clients will to help deal with these items properly.

While this can be a very complex issue, I will try to touch on a few of the areas of concern. First, you need to determine if you are dealing with a traditional will or a pourover will. If you are dealing with a pourover will, then you need to direct that NFA firearms go to the NFA trust and other personal property go to the other trust. The real problem is that if you are dealing with a traditional will.

Some of the sections that you should consider modifying are the areas where they talk about

Specific Gifts
Disposition of Property
Contingent Beneficiaries
Powers of the Personal Representative
Who is qualified as a PR
Guardianship provisions to the extent they are the guardian over the propery of an inappropriate heir
Payment of taxes and expenses - you may want to exclude these assets from the pool used to pay these funds.
Reliance of legal opinions
Incapacity in regards to these items.

As you can see it could be very tricky to deal with NFA firearms and regular assets within the same document and create confusion over what should be done and what is required to be done for each type of asset. It might be easier to deal with a codicil which only deals with modification for these specific items.

If you own NFA firearms as an individual you might consider moving them into a Gun Trust to protect your family and friends from inadvertent liability created by the improper use, transfer, possession, or transportation of these items. For help creating a NFA Gun Trust contact a Gun Trust Lawyer.

David Goldman of Apple Law Firm, Florida Estate Planning Lawyer Blog, and NFA Gun Trust Lawyer Blog became a member of the Estate Planning Professionals network (EPPN) of the NRA. The next EPPN event will be held in conjunction with the NRA Annual Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina in May 2010.

As a member of the EPPN, David can modify wills and trusts with language that can be added to Florida Wills and Trusts to make bequests to the national Rifle Association or any of the NRA charities or endowments.

Florida Revocable Trust's as well as those created in other states often have language that provides for the health, education, maintenance, and support of our spouses and children. Recently I was reading an article written by a CA Estate Planning Lawyer and firearms instructor on providing firearms training as an option within the definition of education. David R. Duringer wrote an article entitled Does the Definition of Education in Your Revocable Trust Allow for Firearms Training? and while it is a short article and only deals with firearms education, it got me thinking about other types of education and training that may be important to your beneficiaries or family tradition that you may want to include in your traditional revocable trust. Obviously this is something that would make sense to provide for in a NFA Gun Trust or a firearms trust designed specifically for firearms. In David's article he goes on to state

Such training can provide your children with the comfort of skill at arms so they can protect themselves and their own children, and furthermore, passes on American values necessary to preserve political independence of families in our society. Other benefits of such training can include increased personal responsibility and lower juvenile delinquency rates.

You may even want to go further with an incentive trust provision actually requiring this training, possibly with achievement standards.

A new concept in Estate planning is creating a trust to protect the families firearms. For the past few years the public has been using NFA Firearms Trusts for the purchase and protection of Title II, those sold by a Class 3 SOT,firearms that are restricted by the NFA. Most gun enthusiast expect there to be a renewed ban on Assault Weapons that becomes permanent. To protect your families assault weapons, you might consider a new twist to the NFA firearms trust - the Assault Weapons Trust. It might be a good idea to transfer your Assault Weapons into a Assault Weapons Trust before there is a ban on future transfers of these firearms.

Often a Florida Revocable Trust is not modified promptly upon a divorce. If the trust is subject to Florida law, Florida Statutes 736.1105 can amend the trust when the prior spouse is named as a beneficiary and the other spouse creates the trust.

736.1105 Dissolution of marriage; effect on revocable trust.--Unless the trust instrument or the judgment for dissolution of marriage or divorce expressly provides otherwise, if a revocable trust is executed by a husband or wife as settlor prior to annulment of the marriage or entry of a judgment for dissolution of marriage or divorce of the settlor from the settlor's spouse, any provision of the trust that affects the settlor's spouse will become void upon annulment of the marriage or entry of the judgment of dissolution of marriage or divorce and any such trust shall be administered and construed as if the settlor's spouse had died on the date of the annulment or on entry of the judgment for dissolution of marriage or divorce.

If you have a joint trust that was not addressed in a divorce decree or anulent or have recently been divorced, you should Contact a Florida Estate Planning Lawyer to review your trust to make sure that your ex-spouse is treated as per your intentions and not what your documents state.

A new concept in Estate planning is creating a trust to protect the families firearms. For the past few years the public has been using NFA Firearms Trusts for the purchase and protection of Title II firearms that are restricted by the NFA. Most gun enthusiast expect there to be a renewed ban on Assault Weapons that becomes permanent. To protect your families assault weapons, you might consider a new twist to the firearms trust - the Assault Weapons Trust. It might be a good idea to transfer your Assault Weapons into a Assault Weapons Trust before there is a ban on future transfers of these firearms.

As many of you have noticed the Firearms articles on this site have been transitioned to the NFA Gun Trust Lawyer website. If you are in Florida or South Carolina and are looking for a Florida Gun Trust Lawyer or South Carolina Gun Trust Lawyer Contact us or visit NFA Gun Trust Lawyer website for more information. If you are looking or a gun trust in another state you can contact the Apple Law Firm or NFA Gun Trust Lawyer website.

NFA Gun Trust Lawyer blog has an article on the 150 + page decision issued today in the gun rights case before the Supreme Court. Looks like good news for gun owners but it will take sometime to digest the full opinion which is over 150 pages. There is a link to the Supreme Court Gun Case also

A new Blog ( Gun Trust Lawyer ) dedicated to Gun Trusts and issues related to the ownership of class 3 weapons (which I started) has an article on a man who was arrested for an improper transfer of a unknown class 3 machine gun.

His gun misfired and was reclassified as a Machine Gun. This along with allowing a potential buyer to shoot it at a range resulted in the invalid transfer of a Class 3 Weapon, a crime punishable under the NFA with a sentence of up to 10 years in jail.

These are the types of transfers a NFA FIREARMS TRUST can help prevent.

The is the link to the article on Invalid Class 3 Gun Transfer

Tennessee has joined the growing list of states in which we have a relationship with a lawyer who is familiar with the (NFA) National Firearms Act's requirements relating to the formation of trusts to purchase Class 3 weapons. These include silencers, short barrel rifles, and machine guns.

If you are looking to create a Tennessee NFA Firearms Trust, please Contact us and we can help make sure your trust deals with the many unique issues surrounding owning these firearms in a Revocable Trust

If you live in Tennessee or another state and wish to create a NFA trust to protect your family and purchase NFA Class 3 or Class 1 firearms Contact a NFA lawyer in your state

If you are a lawyer licensed in any state and would like to work with us to provide NFA trusts to clients in your state, please Contact David Goldman a Florida Gun Trust Lawyer.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist today signed important National Rifle Association (NRA)-backed legislation into law that will protect the existing rights of law-abiding gun owners. House Bill 503 preserves the self-defense rights of law-abiding men and women as they travel in their cars to and from their daily activities.

"Customers and workers should not have to choose between protecting themselves or following the political policies of an anti-gun business," said NRA Past President Marion P. Hammer. "The right to protect oneself must be maintained no matter where you park your car."

This legislation protects the rights of gun owners to possess a firearm in any private motor vehicle in a parking lot, and prevents businesses from searching private vehicles of customers or employees.

"This is a great day for the people of the state of Florida," concluded Hammer. "Their right to keep and bear arms for self-defense and other lawful purposes has been restored."