Murdoch family battle highlights Nevada's secret trust boom
The Murdoch family feud taking place in an obscure Nevada court highlights the state’s surging popularity as a global center of family trusts and a friendly home to the world’s biggest fortunes.
The Murdoch family feud taking place in an obscure Nevada court highlights the state’s surging popularity as a global center of family trusts and a friendly home to the world’s biggest fortunes.
According to legal industry rankings, Nevada is now the top state in the country when it comes to so-called asset-protection trusts like the one at the center of the Murdoch dispute. The state’s unique combination of no income taxes, iron-clad secrecy protections and strong defenses against creditors makes it the ideal location for big family trusts created to protect assets.
Nevada doesn’t report the total amount of assets in its trusts. The Western state’s fast-growing industry of trust and estate attorneys, trust companies and facilitators keeps a deliberately low profile. Yet experts estimate the state likely has hundreds of billions of dollars in trust assets locked away in nondescript office buildings or trust companies, offering little to no visibility to the outside world.
“Nevada is No. 1 and has been for at least four years,” said Steven Oshins, a Nevada attorney who publishes the most widely cited ranking of states based on their appeal to asset-protection trusts.
South Dakota is a “close second,” and then “there is a big drop-off for the next batch with Tennessee, Delaware and others,” Oshins added.
Rating: 5