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Trusts are designed to keep wealth out the public eye, and inheritance battles usually happen behind closed doors. But a first-of-its-kind study of hundreds of contested trust cases offers a rare look at the circumstances that can send heirs to court.
One of the biggest pitfalls for handing down wealth is choosing one child to control a family trust when siblings or other relatives would also benefit, according to the analysis of 640 trust disputes, published in the Washington University Law Review earlier this month.
Christopher Ryan, one of the study’s authors and a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, described this specific trust setup as “an important recipe for conflict.”
“That…
