Give the People What They Want? The Onshoring of the Offshore

Iowa Law Review, Vol. 103, 2018

This is a revised version of the 2017 Tamisiea Lecture in Wealth Transfer Law, given at the College of Law, University of Iowa on 8 September 2017 as part of the Iowa Law Review/ACTEC Symposium on “Wealth Transfer Law in Comparative and International Perspective”.

20 Pages Posted: 27 Jul 2018

See all articles by Lionel Smith

Lionel Smith

Downing Professor of the Laws of England

Date Written: September 6, 2017

Abstract

The author argues that US law is in danger of undermining its own coherence in the pursuit of competition for trust business with offshore jurisdictions. This has happened partly due to a desire to allow those who create trusts to do whatever they wish. But US law, like other common law systems, has always imposed certain limits on freedom of choice in trust law; properly understood, those limits exist in order to protect a range of values that are just as important as settlors' freedom of choice. Losing sight of the importance of these limits threatens the integrity of the legal order.

Keywords: Trusts, Offshore Trusts, Non-Charitable Purpose Trusts, Asset Protection Trusts, Jurisdictional Competition, Choice Of Law

JEL Classification: K00, K1, K11, K19

Suggested Citation

Smith, Lionel, Give the People What They Want? The Onshoring of the Offshore (September 6, 2017). Iowa Law Review, Vol. 103, 2018, This is a revised version of the 2017 Tamisiea Lecture in Wealth Transfer Law, given at the College of Law, University of Iowa on 8 September 2017 as part of the Iowa Law Review/ACTEC Symposium on “Wealth Transfer Law in Comparative and International Perspective”. , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3209423

Lionel Smith (Contact Author)

Downing Professor of the Laws of England ( email )

10 West Road
Cambridge, CB3 9DZ
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/d-smith/83102

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