Another one

Reading about Dynasty Trusts... (p. 338 in Property, Dukeminier & Krier, 5th ed)

Question 2 about "If your ancestor had, in 1800, created a perpetual trust for his descendants, how many beneficiaries would there be today? Would you know where they are?"

At last! The whole time I'm reading about the Rule against Perpetuities and the USRAP etc., I'm thinking "Do these people ever stop to consider just how many descendants there will be of somebody some 360 years or whatever insane time down the road? The genealogist in me is chuckling madly - Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Talk about vested future interests subject to open!

I know that the book in my possession written back in 1965 thoroughly detailing all the descendants of Friedrich Krebill (1788-1849) and his wife Anna Risser (1794-1857) was a thumb-thick, with an average of twelve persons per page - my brother was the youngest child in that book... there's been almost two generations more since then; the descendants number in the high hundreds (we had 40+ at the last tiny sub-branch reunion two summers ago!).

And then there's Alexander Hamilton Willard, private on the Lewis & Clark Expedition, 200 years ago. He and his wife Eleanor MacDonald had twelve children... today the his descendants make up the single largest contingent of descendants of the L&C Expedition - survey of those so inclined to register by 2003 to celebrate the L&C bicentennial numbered into the multiple thousands (yes, I'm one).

Footnote 31 on page 337 says that Estate attorneys shoulda made more than $25 Billion in the last 10 years off these perpetual dynastic trusts. Know what? I see a fortune for a Genealogical Lawyer, to keep track and find the inheritors of such monster trusts. Somebody sign me up!

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