Misplaced Blame

 

This guest post is from Alex Daniels, Regent Law 2L student:

Trusts often have a bad reputation. They’re thought of as tools for the rich to evade taxes and “game the system.” Whether or not this is a valid critique, this mistrust is often wrongly placed on the attorneys that use them. People think of trust attorneys as schemers, dreaming up ways to avoid one’s civic duty to pay taxes. 

This shouldn’t be placed on the attorneys, however, because attorneys don’t make the rules. If someone is given a toolset and a task, their job should be to do the best job of it with what they’re given. To ask otherwise is to ask them to fail their clients. After all, if anyone hires a plumber, they expect him to do the best job he can do, and if there’s doubt about what the right move is, he should consult his client. If the plumber were to make his own decision without consulting the person who’s paying him, anyone would say he’s done a bad job. Likewise with an attorney.

No, the hue and cry against trusts should be levied against the people who can actually do something about it—legislators. It is the legislators who have largely put in place trust law, and it is legislators that should be held accountable if trusts are indeed a problem. It’s not fair to give an attorney a tool, tell him that his job is to do the best he possibly can for his client, but then blame him when his client chooses to use that tool. Lawyers’ hands are as tied as everyone else’s’, and to attack them for using the tools they are given is improperly founded, and it does nothing to address complaints. Lawyers are not the problems. If there are problems with trust laws, take it up with the legislature.