"If there are problems with your trust paperwork down the road, all your NFA items become contraband and subject to seizure." well MAYBE, but your trust paperwork is typically subimitted with your transfer, so unless you go and change your trust after you've had transfers to it, you will "probably" be all set. So just as the ATF doesn't seem to "randomly" check Jim Smith who had a Thompson registered in 1940, is still alive, they "probably" will only be looking at your trust paperwork at the time of the transfer...Further, on the same note, if you have a corporation/LLC/etc, and it lapses, technically any NFA under it is contraban as well...
Ah, so, just when you're dead, and its time for your trustees to transfer your NFA items to your beneficiaries, that's a bad time to find out from the ATF examiner that your trust was invalid, and turn them all in. A corporation/LLC is much safer, I believe, then a trust for NFA acquisition, except it has to have money paid to the state annually. Fail to pay, your corp goes away, and your NFA is contraband, as you point out.
"If you personally own your NFA items, ATF will approve one interstate and tax free transfer to your decedents. They will not do that if your items are in a trust. A trustee must sign a Form 4, it will be tax paid, and it will need to go through a FFL if its going to another state." True, but really a glass 1/2 empty view, sure it MIGHT cost a heir a $200 transfer tax (but we are talking $$$ NFA items, so $200 is not much to worry about), but on the glass 1/2 full side with a trust, you could accomplish the same simply by changing trustees. say for example my son is the beificaiary (or what ever it is legally called) of my trust and I die tommorrow, but my son is too young to own the nfa device, a simple legal ammendment to the trust changing trustees to my wife and all is well, my son still gets the device when he is of age.
I think instead the glass is simple the wrong size, actually.
![[smile]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/001.gif "Smile [smile]")
If the NFA items you own are not MGs, they aren't $$$. An AR-15 SBR is what, $1500? A $200 tax on that, and I might as well not go to the hassle. If you personally owned the NFA item, and bequeathed it to your son in a will, with your wife or someone else acting as executor, the executor could sign a form transferring it. Simple.
"If for some reason you get NFA items in a trust, and later you'd like to have them in your name, its another transfer tax for each item." Sure thats true, but personally I think NFA is safer in trusts or corporations, than personally owned. Back when they drafted NFA thompson cost 200+/- they made the tax $200, let say they decide to finally adjust the tax for inflation, OR WORSE go the route of canada and say NFA is still legal we just won't approve transfers anymore...well you and me might be up the creek with our personally owned NFA, but my trust and LLC NFA items will be alive and well long after I am gone...
If they change the tax, life sucks. If you're items are personally owned, and you die, one free transfer might make it worth it. If they ban transfers, the corporation is the safer way, as the corporation, with all its assets, can be sold. If your items are owned by a trust, the trustees will need to distribute it's assets, and your beneficiaries get nothing. Just like if your alive, when your trust transfers out an item, it goes on a tax paid Form 4.
Trusts are a specific legal tool with certain purposes. It's not some magic paper-based entity to own things forever and ever. They have certain legal obligations. The stuff they own is distributed to the beneficiaries by the trustees, without the need of the courts to get involved. That's why they exist; to help with estate planning.
I'm not against owning NFA items in trusts, LLCs, etc, etc. I just want those here that are reading about these trust things as a way to get a SBR to understand what they're getting into. Lawyers, every though they're evil, are the best bet for good information on this and other legal issues.
--EasyD
