I don’t know if this was posted on here already or not. I did a quick search and didn’t find anything about it on M4C. For everyone who is dealing with NFA Trusts, this might be of some interest.
Trusts are more complicated than people think. I was talking to someone at the gun range a few weeks ago about his self-prepared trust. Two questions to him disclosed the fact that his trust legally does not even exist because of a very basic error in its preparation. Felony ahoy.
I’m a lawyer and I paid a specialist lawyer $300 to prepare my trust, which I then carefully reviewed and sent back for revisions. I consider it time and money well spent.
Who is the trustee? Who is the settlor (grantor)? Who are the beneficiaries? If they’re all the same person no trust exists. (If you’re counting, that’s three questions).
Thinking about it, he may have used a form trust off of the Internet and not one from one of the software packages - but there are reports of trusts being fouled up even when using those.
Would this mean that a previously approved Form 1 would be invalid? I’m not a lawyer (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night…)
but wouldn’t that open the ATF to trouble by having said it was good to go originally?
I don’t think you have to worry about that. NFA Branch been more careful in reviewing trusts with greater scrutiny to make sure they’re valid under the state’s law where it was executed, and for this reason I understand that a number of pending Forms 1 and 4 have been kicked back. IMHO they’re not going to go through 1,000 of already-filed trusts full of Legalese to see if some are not in compliance.
