Articles Posted in FAQ’s

If a Gun Trust Lawyer® provided your gun trust, it will not require a tax return. As stated in the instructions memorandum that comes with every NFA Gun Trust from a Gun Trust Lawyer®, the trust is a disregarded entity and any transactions that create a gain or loss pass though to the individuals. This does not mean that transactions that take place are not taxable but it would be treated the same as if you bought and sold items as an individual. This may be more complicated with a multi-settlor trust and you should discuss the specifics of this with your accountant or CPA to determine how to properly report the income on the individual settlors tax returns.

If you have another trust that was not prepared by a Gun Trust Lawyer®, you should ask an attorney or CPA about the taxable issues as while many trusts will be treated the same for tax purposes, your trust may be different and require a tax return or other federal or state documents to be filed.

We have been a member of the NRA Estate Planning Professional Network for several years. In doing so, we have encountered a number of clients who want to leave certain items or a percentage of their firearms to one or more of the NRA Endowment Funds.

Recently we modified our Gun Trusts to include provisions so that each individual can choose if and what they would like to leave to the NRA Endowment Fund of their choice. For those of you who do not have these provisions in your Gun Trust we will be providing a Free Amendment Form that you can compete that allows you to leave any percentage of your trust assets to the NRA before making beneficiary designations, any percentage of your trust assets to the NRA Endowment Fund of your choice if your beneficiaries do not survive the creators of the trust, or a list of specific items that you want to go to the NRA Charity of your choice.

This will make it easier for our clients to bring their Gun Trusts into compliance with their overall charitable giving goals.ing

A validly created Gun Trust should be valid in another state if you move. While the Gun Trust may not appear valid to the ATF or BATFE, it will be recognized under state law as valid if validly create in another state. When you create a Gun Trust or modify your Gun Trust it is wise to use the minimum requirements of the most strict state so that if you move, or it is used in another state, it will be easy for the ATF to recognize the trust as validly executed.

A Gun Trust that is created in one state, will not allow you or anyone associate with the trust to purchase items in a state where they are illegal to own or purchase. Nor can you take NFA firearms to a state where they are prohibited.

Because we work with a network of lawyers across the United State, our trust incorporate many of the provisions necessary in each state from the beginning. In addition, they can be easily amended to comply with another state’s law if you choose to make such modifications. Further, our trusts are designed to allow for authorized users in different states from where the items may have been purchased or where the Gun Trust was created.

An agent acting under a power of attorney for an individual who has rights to own, possess, or use NFA firearms as an individual or in a NFA Firearms Trust, may not take possession, hold, use, or have access to the NFA firearms.

There is only one situation when an agent may do so. After the death of an individual who has rights to or owns NFA Firearms individually or who is current beneficiary of the NFA firearms, the court will appoint a Personal Representative. The court appointed Personal Representative only and not one who is only named in a will, may have access, and transfer the NFA firearms within a reasonable period of time. There is no guidance on what the ATF considers reasonable, but I would suggest starring the process as soon as possible so that the definition of reasonableness is not determined in a case involving you.

The easy way to deal with this for those of you who own Firearms in a NFA trust is to modify to the trust to allow the person who is the agent to be a trustee in the trust. Remember you can add or remove people from a NFA Trust at any time with a simple amendment.

We often get calls from clients asking how many original trusts should they have or sign. Our instructions state that a copy of the trust is the same as an original. Using this logic, it would seem clear that there is no benefit to having multiple original copies of your Gun Trust. In fact, it could create problem to have multiple originals because each copy that is separately executed is technically a separate trust and amendments to one Gun Trust would not create changes to the other Gun Trusts. It could be difficult to determine which Gun Trust owns an asset and if amendments were made to that Gun Trust or not.

I think you can see that not only is it not necessary to execute multiple copies but it could cause problems and create situations where you or other family members or friends are in violation of the law.

So Remember Sign One, make many copies.

We often get asked questions regarding sending the original trust to the ATF. You should never send your original trust. You should only send a copy. The ATF have been known to have lost applications in the past and they never send back your original trust.

If your Gun Trust was novelized with a raised seal, you should shade the seal with a pencil and then send a photocopy of the trust. This way the seal will show in the photo copy. Most jurisdictions have gone away from using raised seals because of the problems they create when copying.