Taxation & Estate Planning

Greenville Estate Lawyer: ?Court of Appeals Decides Constructive Trust Appeal?

By Christopher L. Miller

In McDaniel v. Kendrick, Op. No. 4643 (S.C. Ct. App. filed December 31, 2009), the South Carolina Court of Appeals decided a real estate dispute with a tangential relationship to estate planning. Oftentimes, a mom or dad will decide as part of their estate planning to transfer a home to a child as a gift, with the expectation that the parent would continue to reside in the home for the rest otheir lives. This might be done for medicaid qualification purposes (assuming medicaid is not expected to be necessary for at least five years), or estate tax purposes. What happens however is the relationship between parent and child or parent and spouse of child deteriorates, and the parent is evicted from the home.

There is an equitable legal doctrine known as a constructive trust that could come to the parent’s rescue in the above situation. While the McDaniel case did not concern a home transfer for the purpose of estate planning, it involved (more…)

Full post as published by Res Publicae - The New York Estates Blog on January 22, 2010 (boomark / email).