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Trusts get complicated quickly, and I'll admit i don't know enough about per-country/per-state (in the US) trust law to know if you could achieve this for real

Trusts get complicated quickly, and I'll admit i don't know enough about per-country/per-state (in the US) trust law to know if you could achieve this for real everywhere. I'm sure there are countries you can mostly achieve it, and places where it's really hard. One major problem with trusts is in lots of places you usually can't undo the action of a rogue trustee, only seek damages/etc against them. It gets complicated there too - whether you can order the return of property, etc, often depends on the status of who it was sold to and whether they knew or should have known, or ... This usually means you have to enjoin them ahead of time if you can. In the end, the law generally assumes money damages are a sufficient remedy. Not always true, but mostly true. Again, even this varies by country/state. Honestly, given some of these are talking about many billions of dollars in companies, i'm sort of surprised at the lack of legislative assistance. Creating a corporate form that supports this much more effectively is not hard (states/countries definitely have the power to do it), and despite the common view of legislators/etc, this sort of non-controversial thing is not that hard to get passed, though it takes time. I suspect it's mostly related to "nobody starts trying to get this done 10 years before they want it done" :P

vessenes 2y ago
There were a series of performance art type challenges to citizens united in Washington state, including one guy who wanted to marry a company (application denied - company was under 18 years old. Really.) And given Seattle’s economic history and trajectory, “permanent” trusts that can revive your frozen head in a couple of hundred years are not uncommonly sought after but difficult to achieve in the US. As you say, trust law is complex, not least because there are basically three overlapping trust systems. I think UK law is likely the one you’d want for these. Scottish based trust law includes the concept of reverting a trust for the common good, (based on an amazing amazing sequence of events where the sole surviving relative of a rich Scottish dude challenged his trust formed for the purpose of putting statues of himself up everywhere in Scotland — she won, trust dissolved, then when she died with no heirs or relatives, she tried to make the same bequest — the state itself dissolved the trust and took the money.) And, my very basic understanding of Civil law trusts is that they are less interested in the beneficial owner part of the trust and more interested in following civic/statutory rules. Well, maybe a civil law country would be a good place to start here actually. Obviously, IANAL.

vessenes 2y ago

There were a series of performance art type challenges to citizens united in Washington state, including one guy who wanted to marry a company (application denied - company was under 18 years old. Really.) And given Seattle’s economic history and trajectory, “permanent” trusts that can revive your frozen head in a couple of hundred years are not uncommonly sought after but difficult to achieve in the US. As you say, trust law is complex, not least because there are basically three overlapping trust systems. I think UK law is likely the one you’d want for these. Scottish based trust law includes the concept of reverting a trust for the common good, (based on an amazing amazing sequence of events where the sole surviving relative of a rich Scottish dude challenged his trust formed for the purpose of putting statues of himself up everywhere in Scotland — she won, trust dissolved, then when she died with no heirs or relatives, she tried to make the same bequest — the state itself dissolved the trust and took the money.) And, my very basic understanding of Civil law trusts is that they are less interested in the beneficial owner part of the trust and more interested in following civic/statutory rules. Well, maybe a civil law country would be a good place to start here actually. Obviously, IANAL.