United States Trust Law

United States trust law is the body of law regulating the legal instrument for holding wealth known as a trust.

Most law regulating the creation and administration of trusts in the United States is now statutory at the state level. In August 2004, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws created the first attempt to codify generally accepted common law principles in Anglo-American law regarding trusts into a uniform statutory code for the fifty states, called the Uniform Trust Code (UTC). As of October 2009, 24 states have adopted some substantive form of the UTC with three others having introduced it into the legislature for adoption. The goal of the uniform law is to standardize the law of trusts to a greater extent, given their increased use as a substitute for the "last will and testament" as the primary estate planning mechanism for the affluent.

Despite the uniform law, however, differences remain, as states still harbor rich differences in fiduciary law. It has been a common practice of American lawyers for the past 150 years or so to choose the law of Massachusetts to govern the disposition of property conveyed in trust. In the absence of a nationally uniform law, their justification was that the courts of Massachusetts ruled on trust questions with far greater experience and authority than any other State (much like choosing corporate law in Delaware for a new company). Each state adopting the UTC has incorporated changes to their version of the Code, reflecting certain peculiar or long-standing exceptions in their own state's law that legislators intend to preserve.