Articles Posted in Asset Protection for Firearms

A Gun Trust should be designed to hold all firearms including those restricted by the NFA including your AR-15s.  All of our Gun Trusts are designed for all of your firearms. As an owner of many types of guns, I designed this trust to deal with issues from a revolver, to a Glock pistol, AR-15s, and even NFA firearms like silencers and machine guns.

Most people do not realize that many of the same issues regarding transfer upon death or incapacity exist for regular firearms and NFA firearms sold by Class 3 SOT dealers. This is why I would suggest putting all of your Guns in one of our Gun Trusts.

Recently, there has been much discussion regarding the banning of AR-15 style firearms.  If your firearms are in a trust, the trust can later be amended to be a multi-generational trust which can insulate the firearms from future transfers. Our multi generational Gun Trust provides asset protection at each generation and prevents transfers.  The beneficiaries do not receive the firearms by transfer upon your death but become the next managers of the trust.  The Professional Gun Trust remains the owner generation after generation.

We have been telling people for years that a properly drafted gun trust can help protect your firearms in the event that you become a prohibited person in the future.  Today the Supreme Court came to a Unanimous Decisions supporting our view that a trust can be used to hold firearms for a liquidating event or for the future beneficiaries of the trust without being lost.

The court held that “while a convicted felon is prohibited from “possessing” firearms pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 922(g), nothing strips the individual of his/her property interest in the firearms and the individual retains “the right merely to sell or otherwise dispose of their firearms,” provided the felon lacks all control over the firearms.  Our Gun Trusts already provide for this ability to just this type of purpose.

The Court also held that  “§ 922(g) does not bar such a transfer unless it would allow the felon to later control the guns, so that he could either use them or direct their use.”  This even permits an individual to create a gun trust after they lose their rights, assign the property to a trust as long as they do not have the ability to have direct or indirect use nor direct their use.  A properly drafted gun trust would remove all abilities of a felon or prohibited person from using or directing the use of all firearms and ammo within the trust.

Many people are concerned about the ability to change the terms of their trust after they die or the Trust it becomes irrevocable. Our Professional Gun Trust no comes with an ArmsGuard™ Protector that allows for the terms of you trust to change if laws change in the future.

This means that if the local, state, or federal government changes a law dealing with firearms and your rights, your trust can be changed to deal with the changes even if the change is 300 years from now. If you have firearms and it is important to preserve them for future generations and keep creditors from being able to reach the firearms you should Contact Us to create a Gun Trust with the ArmsGuard™ Protector.

Remember it is important to have your firearms and magazines transferred to your Gun Trust before laws change. The ArmsGuard™ Protector can only work for items within the Gun Trust. Many states and the federal government now have bills before congress seeking to restrict our gun rights and the ability for future transfers. If these bills become laws, like recently happened in NY, you may not have the ability to buy, sell, or give firearms to your spouse or children. Some states have already passed laws which restrict the transfer of certain items so it is important to speak with a Gun Trust Lawyer® in your state.

Lawyers in other states are always asking where they can learn about NFA Trusts and Gun Trusts. Here is an opportunity to learn about advanced planning with gun trusts for your clients.

I have been asked by the American Bar Association to present a CLE which will be available to lawyers and non-lawyers on the use of Gun Trusts to protect firearms from changes in future legislation. For those who are not familiar it was the ABA Journal that wrote an article on my a few years ago about the creation of a new area of legal practice dealing with Gun Trusts The print version of the article was In Goldmans Guns Trust and an online version is available under Florida lawyer Fashions Gun Trust (And Niche Practice).

Brief Program Description:

A Gun Trust is designed for all of your firearms even if you do not have any Title II firearms. Title II firearms are sold by Class 3 Dealers and include Silencers, Short barreled rifles and shotguns, AOWs, DDs and full automatic pistols and rifles.

While it is not necessary under the current laws (2012) to have a Gun Trust to allow others to use or be in possession of your firearms, there are rumors that many firearms that are currently classified as TItle I firearms may become Title II firearms and controlled under the National Firearms Act. If this happens we will all have to be careful about constructive possession and may lose the ability to transfer these firearms to others, may have to pay a transfer fee to transfer them to others, or may lose them upon our death.

A Gun Trust can allow you to allow others to have access to your firearms and even become the person in control of them after you die. While a regular Gun Trust can your beneficiaries to use and have access to the firearms there is a risk that the people who would receive the benefit after your death may not be able to actually realize the full benefits from the value of your guns.

How can a Gun Trust protect my guns for my children and other family members?

Recently we have had many inquires as to how a Gun Trust can be used to protect firearms from future or currently pending legislation. First let me say that while no previous gun law has taken away the current owners rights, there is no guarantee that a future law would not attempt to do so. In other words, no one can guarantee you what will happen in the future. If we look at the firearms restrictions that have been imposed on US citizens over the last 200 years we see that all legislation has been designed to restrict future purchases and transfers of firearms and even attempts to totally ban firearms have allowed those who already possess them to keep their guns.

All of our Gun Trusts are designed to own regular and NFA firearms including the so-called “Assault Weapons”. Our lower end trusts are based on revocable trusts that will end at sometime after the death of the person who creates it. We do have a Professional gun trust which is designed to offer both asset protection and multi generational ownership of the firearms.

Red-Wagon-of-Guns.jpgAmmoLand has posted an article on Gun Trusts which has a good explanation of Gun Trust and why traditional estate planning is not appropriate for firearms collectors or owners. It also goes into some details on how a gun trust works, benefits of a gun trust, and how asset protection for your firearms can be accomplished. (This concept of this article was prepared by my office)

Many of us understand how addicting firearms are. When we purchased our first silencer, we had no idea how many we would eventually purchase and how quickly the value of our firearms collection would grow. As the average firearms collection of our clients has grown, we have come our with additional versions of our Gun Trusts for our clients. Because of our commitment to our clients and the firearms owners, we have allowed everyone to maintain their initial investment in their gun trust. The Gun Trusts Lawyers® that we work with will allow you to trade in your original Gun Trust for full credit towards our Asset Protection Gun Trust.

All of our Gun Trusts are designed for NFA firearms as well as regular firearms. As you know, many of the same issues in determining if your beneficiaries will be appropriate to receive your firearms after you die are the same for Title I or Title II firearms. When looking at the value of your firearms collection, be sure to consider the value of your entire collection. To help you decide which trust is appropriate we have put together some basic guidelines.

If you have less than $25,000 in firearms, the basic Gun Trust is probably the right choice. If you have between $25,000 and $50,000 in firearms you should consider the Asset Protection Gun Trust and if your collection is over $50,000 you should be using the Asset Protection Gun Trust.

Today the ATF announced that a Laredo man was sentenced to 10 years for the illegal possession of a firearm. It is important to understand who can and who cannot own, possess, or use firearms whether they are Title I or Title II firearms. Just because you might not consider a silencer a firearm, its possession is limited in the same way a regular pistol is. While there is not official duty to ask if someone is prohibited, its wise to do so because not only is the possession of an item subject to the NFA regulated, but the transfer (handing it to them or allowing them to have access to it) is also regulated and could subject each of you to 10 years in jail and up to a $250,000 penalty per occurrence.

Our NFA Gun Trusts ( the basic and the new asset protection firearms trust) both allow the people involved with your trust to understand who is prohibited and who is not. Often people do not even know that they have lost their firearms rights and it is important to have them understand when they are a prohibited person as well as allow you to know whether a family member or friend is prohibited now and in the future.

If you would like to discuss asset protection for your firearms or creating a gun trust to own your firearms including Title II firearms, we would be happy to help you find a local Gun Trust Lawyer to create a trust for you.

One benefit of using a Gun Trust that is often overlooked is the ease of changing authorized users or managers of the firearms in the event of a charge relating to domestic violence or other Lautenberg amendment violations. We all know people who have been involved in a divorce and had claims of domestic violence or child abuse made to potentially bolster the other spouse’s position regarding the divorce, alimony, child custody, or child support. Unfortunately, the way in which your divorce attorney deals with this issue, could cause you to lose your firearms rights. It is very important to make sure your divorce attorney understands these issues or consults with an attorney who does so that you do not lose your rights over a technicality.

More importantly, if you do lose your rights, you may lose your investment in your firearms as they may not be transferable in time to lose them to a confiscation. With a Gun Trust, even though you can be a manager, you do not technically own them. Therefore, if you lose your rights to own or possess firearms, we simply need to amend your trust to deal with the possession issue as you are no longer the owner anyway.

This becomes much more important with Title II firearms (those sold by Class III Dealers) because of the time it takes to transfer these firearms. For more on this you may want to read the Jacksonville Divorce Attorney Blog’s article on Domestic Violence and Gun Rights written by Kelley Ryan a Jacksonville Divorce Lawyer.

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