For those of you that have gone the trust route, how are you paying for your NFA items? In the Apple law firm trust it’s recommended that you open an account in the trust name and buy your items that way. Just wondering how others are paying their suppressors, SBR’s etc.
I use money orders.
You really should open a checking account in the name of the trust, and then write checks for the NFA items, tax stamps, transfer fees, etc from that checking account.
You can grant or contribute cash to the trust as needed to cover costs.
Anytime you are working with a trust, NFA or otherwise, you should not commingle funds and you really want a paper trail in case the validity of the trust is every tested by the ATF, or in court or in some other way.
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Why bother? Unless you are funding your trust from off shore accounts there will be a paper trail (i.e. person who set up the account, transferring of money from one account to another etc.).
My trust lawyer (all he does is gun law) said to not bother. But YMMV.
I would recommend against money order as you have no idea of knowing when the money has cleared unlike a check. Your trust validity is based on how it is written and the makeup of trustees/beneficiaries etc.
I’ve been told, but it’s second hand and not confirmed, that the ATF has considered some NFA items purchased with personal, not trust, funds, to be personally owned, and not owned by the trust.
It would be interesting to know if there are any ruling/opinion letters on this subject to review.
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I’ll email my lawyer tomorrow and see what the response is.
Double tap: sorry
Nonsense. I have paid with USPS money order and checks and everything was approved along with the trust.
I didn’t say it wouldn’t work, just that the trust didn’t purchase the item and there is a risk of downstream problems from you buying it and claiming it was bought buy the trust.
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There is no risk of that whatsoever and what the real issue is people overthinking a process that isn’t that hard to begin with.
We all have the ability to buy things we don’t own, and never possessed. I know people do this for the reasons stated…but I’m not totally sure that it matters or makes legal sense.
If I buy the item, send off the form 4 indicating that the item is to be owned by the trust, receive my stamp, and go to collect said item as trustee, then I the individual never possessed it nor was it ever transferred to me. It was transferred to the trust. Who cares who paid for it?
Thinking is not over-thinking. I’ve seen this phrase repeated over and over by you on various NFA topics.
Anyway, if you are paying for the item personally, paying for the stamp personally, etc., what action are you taking to put the NFA item in the trust?
On the buying things we don’t own, that’s not necessarily true. Take a situation where you have an adult daughter. You can’t ‘just’ buy her a $100,000 Audi S8, creating a situation where you bought it, but she owns/possesses it. I say ‘just’ because in order to do make sure a purchase, there would be a gift tax involved, because there are tax implications for buying things for other people (if above the annual limit of about ~$15k).
The issue, and it may never be an issue, at least not unless you are investigated, which could occur if you used the NFA weapon in self defense or for some reason the ATF investigated you, is that you would be freely co-mingling funds and ownership with the trust assets and personal assets.
Anyway, each to their own on how they use/administer their trust. Some seem to treat it as a sign and forget document, others are treating them like an ongoing entity. My guess is that the people more familiar with dealing with trusts regularly realize the importance of treating them like a real, separate entity.
One thing you should be sure of is that whatever insurance you have lists the trust as an additional named insured.
Because 99% of the time that’s the case. Enjoy your trust and NFA item.
That’s a good point, I had never thought of that. I kept a scuba compressor for a friend and someone stole it from my shed. I filed the claim and the insurance said they would handle it through his home-owners insurance and not mine. Which I thought was odd, but that’s how they did it.
Might very well need a rider on your home-owners insurance similar to what you get for jewelry and art, etc…
Yes, or they may at no charge simply add it as an additional named insured, because it is a revokable trust (not sure).
Having recently done some research, depending on the number of guns/value of your gun collection, home owners insurance can be rather expensive. I’ve heard some request a list of all guns/serial numbers, while others didn’t (my State Farm agent said they didn’t need a list).
Anyway, it seems a lot of homeowner policies seem to cover in the $2,500-$5,000 range (sometimes you have to pay a tiny, few dollars a year to activate the coverage), and then charge something like $1.50-$2.00 or so per $100 in value for anything beyond the base amount. This becomes like a personal articles policy like some people have for jewelry.
In doing research on gun forums, I found that more and more people are going with Eastern Insurance that has a program geared to gun owners/collectors, whether a small number of guns or a $1,000,000 collection. They apparently started out insuring people that had civil war era guns and collectibles, but now cover any firearms. Their base policy is $135 for $35,000 worth of coverage, which includes your guns, cases, scopes, range bags, leather, reloading equipment, etc. Pretty much covers everything related to shooting/firearms except for ammo and reloading components (powder, primers, bullets).
Just trying to share some real world knowledge about trusts and some VERY basic things you should do to maintain the integrity of the instrument, since people come to these threads looking for accurate information.
Don’t worry, be happy, don’t over think it, because the ATF or tax man will never show up at your house and sounds good, but it’s pretty crappy advice for anyone actually trying to learn how to do it right and make sure their trust survives inspection, whether from the ATF, IRS or probate.
When you send in your check or MO, does the BATFE keep a copy of the account information on file with the Trust and Form 1/4?
Trust property doesn’t go thru probate, which is why many people use Trusts.
I properly maintained trust doesn’t. You want to insure the integrity of the trust entity so that it isn’t deemed defective and you need to take some action to make clear that property is actually owned by the trust (purchased by the trust or granted to the trust).
Probably, but unsure. I would guess they would scan everything into a database these days. Probably keep paperwork in a box that gets filed away. When they ask for you to update them on changes like a different length barrel, that suggests they retain your papers. Then again, they could redact your account number … but it is the government.
Call and ask… tell them you are concerned about your account number falling into some file clerks hands.