The late Richard Mellon Scaife. The trust at the center of the litigation was created in 1935 by his mother, Sarah Mellon Scaife. (Photo Courtesy of Tony Tye/Post-Gazette)
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/2015/01/15/Scaife-children/stories/201501150289
On January 15, 2015 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran an article (Scaife children seek details on drained trust) outlining an ongoing court case between the children of Richard Mellon Scaife and the trustees of their grandmother’s trust. The trust was set up in 1935 by the children’s grandmother for the benefit of Richard Mellon Scaife, but apparently language in the document also suggested that some of the principal should be saved for R.M. Scaife’s children. When Mr. Scaife died in July of 2014, Jeannie Scaife and David N. Scaife found that the fund that had contained $210 million dollars in 2005 was now completely drained. They allege that the trustees for the account allowed and even encouraged inappropriate spending from the fund by the late Mr. Scaife.
This case offers a vivid illustration of a point that Pittsburgh CPA, James Lange, has been sharing with his clients for more than 30 years: Trusts are wonderful vehicles to protect and provide for your family for generations, but choosing the right trustees makes all the difference. Creating trusts with banks and lawyers as trustees, even after paying the enormous fees, doesn’t guarantee appropriate fiduciary care.
Lange insists that the moral of the story, no matter how the case turns out, is that most people, even billionaires, will usually be better off with reliable family members as trustees. The family members can hire accountants, attorneys, and money managers to help them manage and maintain the trust. If those people aren’t appropriate or fulfilling their duties properly they can be fired, but control is retained by the family instead of bankers and lawyers whose first duty might not be to your family’s legacy.
If you need help with your financial planning contact us at (800) 387-1129 or (412) 521-2732.
The third edition of Retire Secure!, Retire Secure! A Guide to Making the Most Out of What You’ve Got is set to be released in the coming months, (stay tuned for exact date). This revised Third Edition of Retire Secure! covers how to develop an estate plan that, among other goals, seeks to continue the tax-favored status of your retirement plans or IRAs long after your death using the stretch or inherited IRA—a strategy that has been, and continues to be, threatened by congress. Lange has a history of staying ahead of the curve, seeing trends and changes in the tax laws and developing strategies for his clients in advance to keep them on the right path toward their financial goals. He was among the first to predict the coming changes to the tax law on Roth IRAs and wrote a peer-reviewed article for The Tax Advisor (official journal of the AICPA) that would go on to win article of the year in 1998. He is continuing this trend in this Third Edition by laying out the possibility of the death of the stretch or inherited IRA as we know it, and providing avenues to reach the same or better outcomes for your family including the use of charitable remainder unitrusts, or CRUTS and life insurance.
A nationally recognized IRA, Roth IRA conversion, and 401(k) expert, he is a regular speaker to both consumers and professional organizations. Jim is the creator of the Lange Cascading Beneficiary Plan™, a benchmark in retirement planning with the flexibility and control it offers the surviving spouse, and the founder of The Roth IRA Institute, created to train ad educate financial advisors.
