Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: define the roles of the various parties to a trust and describe the formalities necessary to execute a trust instrument; distinguish between various types of trusts, including irrevocable trusts, revocable trusts, and testamentary trusts; determine whether a trust can hold “s corporation” shares and determine what provisions are necessary to do so; differentiate between various types of trust distribution provisions, identify the benefits and pitfalls associated with them, and draft such provisions to meet clients’ needs and goals; identify gift tax issues that may come up in the course of the preparation of a trust and use “Crummey” provisions to minimize gift-tax consequences on gifts to a trust; analyze the provisions of a trust, and decide whether a gift to such trust will be considered a taxable completed gift; discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having assets in a trust included in the taxable estate of the grantor and determine whether they will be, based on the provisions of the trust; describe the advantages and disadvantages of creating a “grantor” trust vs. a “non-grantor” trust; create trust provisions to ensure that trust assets are not considered “available resources” for Medicaid planning purposes; draft trust provisions to ensure that trust assets are not available to creditors, the grantor, or beneficiaries; discuss the advantages and disadvantages of foreign and domestic assets protection trusts vis a vis other spendthrift trusts; identify the purposes and benefits of a supplemental needs trust and the provisions necessary to allow a trust to qualify as one; ensure that trusts have appropriate secondary provisions and determine whether and when these provisions should be amended or deleted from boilerplate forms when drafting a trust; discuss the requirements of a charitable trust and describe the different types of split interest charitable trusts that are available under federal law.