As an officer of the court, and working out of a courthouse, to where I can walk into the DA's office or any number of private legal offices around the town square and ask at lenth about such matters
Yes, and as a lawyer, I always give my top-notch advice to co-workers/acquaintances who stroll into my office looking for free legal advice.
Actually, I do always use my best efforts regardless of the client; but you can bet if I am answering questions for free, I keep the answer very narrowly focused and do not go looking for ways to expand my responsibilities.
Here are
just a few of the issues mentioned by the Goldman article to consider with Quicken:
1. Quicken never updates its language. If one of its forms is later proved invalid in a court battle, you won't even know it happened, let alone know what language needs to be changed in the trust.
2. Quicken itself advises you to have your form trust reviewed by an attorney.
3. Quicken says you must register your trust with the local court. In Texas, this is not true. You do not need to record your trust. This doesn't have any negative effect on your trust; other than if you follow Quicken's advice you have just made your NFA Trust and its contents a matter of public record when you didn't need to do that.
Take a look at the article, there are more than a few issues that pop up with any form trust.
I feel completely ok with my lowly Quicken model
Well, I'm glad you FEEL ok; but are you actually ok would be my main concern? Quicken might work fine for your needs. It might also have some serious problems. Without knowing more, I couldn't say either way. I'm sure the Quicken trust is sufficient to actually get the NFA-item into your hands about 90% of the time. Whether it creates more issues further down the road depends on your family and relationships as much as it does on how well-written the trust is. If the person designated to determine incapacity isn't going to use their power to remove you from your own trust, then it doesn't really matter whether the document was drafted so that it allows that.
Having an attorney review the trust is not a bad idea, especially for someone with such free and easy access to legal expertise as yourself. Even for those of us that have to pay for it, you aren't looking at a huge expense - and in most cases setting up the trust right in the first place is a one-time charge. Let's say you did pay $600 for an NFA trust (which would be pretty outrageous if all it covered was a simple, straightforward NFA trust with no other items); but that the trust was set up right and addressed all your concerns. A single transferrable Cobray M10 runs about $5,000. How many NFA items would you have to own before you started feeling real good about that initial investment?