Originally Posted by
jack crab
Simply getting a tax stamp does not mean that the BATFE has made a legal review of your trust to establish its validity. They use a check list based on each state's trust laws. For example, if the examiner finds a creator/grantor, a trustee, and a beneficiary, and they are not all the same person, and the document has been executed, then BATFE will proceed. There may still be legal deficiencies within the trust that BATFE does not look for.
I attended a legal continuing education presentation where BATFE counsel gave an example of a bunch of trusts that came through from the same area. The grantor, trustee, and primary beneficiary were different, but the alternate beneficiary was the same person on all these trusts. It appeared to him that someone passed their trust to others to revise. No subsequent person changed the alt. bene. Some guy's wife or girlfriend is due to inherit a bunch of NFA items some day. A valid trust designation but probably not what anyone but the first grantor intended.