Decanting an Irrevocable Trust Under NJ Common Law
Managing partner and leader of the firm’s Private Client Group Lisa S. Presser and Frederick K. Schoenbrodt, II, a Counsel in Drinker Biddle’s Private Client Group, wrote an article titled “Decanting an Irrevocable Trust Under NJ Common Law,” which was published in the New Jersey Law Journal.
In the article, Lisa and Fred discussed the reach and limitations of the seminal case of Wiedenmayer v. Johnson as a basis for the common law “decanting” of an existing irrevocable trust to a new trust with preferred terms. They explored how decanting, if available to the trustees, can be an efficient and appealing strategy to modify the terms of a trust and examined the boundaries of the Wiedenmayer decision as a basis for decanting. The authors further explained that while Wiedenmayer and certain state decanting statutes “provide a framework by which the principal of an existing trust may be decanted to a new trust, the trust instrument itself may be drafted to provide the trustees with sufficient authority to decant without reference to statute or case law.”
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