International Trust & Estate Planning
Cross-border wealth structuring, foreign trust planning, and multi-generational estate planning for internationally mobile individuals and families with connections to multiple countries.
Planning that travels with the family — across jurisdictions, legal traditions, and life events.
A Document Can Be Valid in One Country and Still Create Poor Tax Results in Another
International families often discover, too late, that the estate plan, trust, or marital agreement they built for one country does not perform as intended when the family moves, a member changes citizenship, assets cross borders, or a foreign person becomes a trustee or beneficiary. Legal validity answers one question. Tax efficiency, reporting compliance, and cross-border coordination answer different ones.
The U.S. tax system applies its own classification rules to foreign structures — often producing consequences that differ significantly from how those structures are treated in their home jurisdiction. A trust-type structure that is well-understood in one country may create unexpected U.S. income tax, reporting, and withholding obligations when viewed through the U.S. tax lens. A civil law usufruct may trigger U.S. estate and gift tax consequences its creators never anticipated. A family holding company that works efficiently in a European context may become a controlled foreign corporation in U.S. hands. And a will that distributes assets appropriately under local law may fail to account for U.S. estate tax on worldwide assets once the beneficiary becomes a U.S. person.
We advise internationally mobile individuals, families, and their advisors on structuring estate plans, foreign trusts, and wealth transfer arrangements that work across the jurisdictions where the family actually lives — and we identify and resolve the cross-border issues that arise when family life events intersect with multiple tax systems. Our approach is to ensure that the plan is not only legally valid, but tax-efficient, administratively workable, and coordinated across jurisdictions.
Who We Advise
Internationally Mobile Families
Families with members, assets, or trusts in more than one country — requiring estate plans and wealth structures that function across jurisdictions and are reviewed when family geography changes.
Mixed-Nationality Couples
U.S. citizens married to non-U.S. citizens or residents — requiring analysis of how the unlimited marital deduction, QDOT requirements, gift tax annual exclusion for non-citizen spouses, and estate tax treaties interact with the couple’s cross-border asset structure.
U.S. Grantors & Beneficiaries of Foreign Trusts
U.S. persons who have established or benefit from foreign trusts — requiring U.S. grantor trust analysis, Forms 3520 and 3520-A compliance, distribution planning, and trustee review to preserve intended tax classification.
Foreign Families with U.S.-Person Beneficiaries
Non-U.S. families whose estate plans, trusts, or foundations include current or future U.S.-person beneficiaries — requiring analysis of how those connections affect U.S. reporting obligations, trust classification, and transfer tax exposure.
Families Navigating Major Life Events Across Borders
Families facing a move, marriage, divorce, inheritance, or major liquidity event across jurisdictions — requiring a cross-border review of existing estate plans, trusts, and marital agreements before — not after — the event occurs.
Families with Civil Law Estate Structures
Individuals from French, Spanish, Latin American, and other civil law jurisdictions whose estate plans include usufructs, forced heirship arrangements, or civil law succession structures — requiring analysis of how those structures are treated under U.S. estate, gift, and income tax law.
Technical Depth Across Cross-Border Trust and Estate Planning
Foreign Grantor Trust Planning
Analysis and planning to establish or maintain foreign grantor trust status — including review of the U.S. court test and control test, trustee selection to preserve domestic or foreign classification, and the income tax and reporting consequences of each.
Foreign Non-Grantor Trust — Distribution Planning
Analysis of DNI, UNI, throwback tax, and interest charges for U.S. beneficiaries of foreign non-grantor trusts — and planning for distributions to minimize accumulated income charges before they are made.
Trustee Classification & Foreign Trustee Issues
Analysis of whether a trust is domestic or foreign for U.S. tax purposes — including the impact of naming a non-U.S. person as trustee, and drafting recommendations to protect trust classification when cross-border fiduciary appointments are made.
Mixed-Nationality Couple Planning
Estate and gift tax planning for U.S. citizens married to non-citizen spouses — including QDOT analysis, annual exclusion gifting to non-citizen spouses, and coordination of U.S. estate planning with the couple’s foreign marital property regime.
Usufruct & Civil Law Structure Analysis
U.S. estate and gift tax analysis of usufructs and other civil law succession arrangements — including IRC §2036 retained interest analysis, characterization for U.S. transfer tax purposes, and coordination with French, Spanish, and Latin American civil law succession planning.
Cross-Border Gift & Estate Tax Planning
Structuring of lifetime and testamentary transfers for internationally mobile individuals — including annual exclusion gifts, marital deduction planning, treaty-based exemptions, and generation-skipping transfer tax analysis in the cross-border context.
Multi-Jurisdictional Estate Plan Coordination
Coordination of U.S. estate planning documents with foreign wills, trusts, and succession arrangements — ensuring that the plan functions across all relevant jurisdictions and does not create conflicts between systems.
Forced Heirship & Foreign Succession Law
Analysis of the interaction between U.S. estate and gift tax planning and foreign forced heirship or reserved portion rules — and planning that respects both systems where possible, or identifies where conflicts must be managed.
Representative Matters
Select anonymized engagements. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
FOREIGN TRUST / GRANTOR TRUST ANALYSIS
United States / Europe
Advised a U.S. person who was the grantor of a foreign trust on whether the trust qualified as a foreign grantor trust — including analysis of the U.S. court test and control test, review of trustee appointment provisions, and recommendations for amendments to protect grantor trust status and avoid inadvertent reclassification as a foreign non-grantor trust.
FOREIGN TRUST / DISTRIBUTION PLANNING
United States / Latin America
Advised a U.S. person who was a beneficiary of a foreign non-grantor trust on the U.S. tax consequences of planned distributions — including DNI, UNI, and throwback tax analysis — and on Form 3520 reporting obligations and strategies to reduce the interest charge on accumulated trust income before distributions were made.
INTERNATIONAL TRUST & ESTATE / USUFRUCT
United States / France
Advised a French family on the U.S. estate and gift tax treatment of a usufruct arrangement established under French civil law — including IRC §2036 retained interest analysis, characterization for U.S. transfer tax purposes, and coordination with French notarial counsel on a restructuring plan to reduce U.S. tax exposure before a family member became a U.S. tax resident.
MIXED-NATIONALITY COUPLE / ESTATE PLANNING
United States / International
Advised a U.S. citizen married to a non-U.S. citizen on estate and gift tax planning for a cross-border asset structure — including QDOT analysis for assets passing to the non-citizen surviving spouse, annual exclusion gifting strategy, and review of the couple’s existing estate plan to address worldwide estate tax exposure as a U.S. person with a non-citizen spouse.
INTERNATIONAL TRUST & ESTATE / CROSS-BORDER REVIEW
United States / Europe
Advised a European family on a comprehensive cross-border estate plan review following a family member’s relocation to the United States — including analysis of existing foreign trusts, civil law succession structures, and marital agreements against the U.S. estate and gift tax framework, and coordination with European counsel on a restructuring plan before U.S. residency commenced.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a trust I set up in another country be treated differently for U.S. tax purposes?
Yes — and the difference can be significant. The U.S. tax system applies its own classification rules to foreign trusts, which often diverge from how those trusts are characterized in their home jurisdiction. For U.S. tax purposes, a trust is either domestic or foreign — determined by the U.S. court test (whether a U.S. court can exercise primary supervision over the trust) and the control test (whether U.S. persons control all substantial decisions). A trust-type structure recognized in one country may be classified as a foreign non-grantor trust for U.S. purposes, triggering complex income tax rules on distributions to U.S. beneficiaries, including the throwback rules and interest charges. The U.S. tax analysis of a foreign trust must be done independently of local law characterization.
What happens if a non-U.S. person becomes the trustee of my trust?
This is one of the most common and consequential unintended cross-border issues in estate planning. For a trust to be classified as domestic for U.S. tax purposes, U.S. persons must control all substantial decisions of the trust — including decisions about distributions, investments, and amendments. If a non-U.S. person serves as trustee and has authority over these decisions, the trust may be reclassified as a foreign trust, triggering different income tax treatment, reporting obligations under Forms 3520 and 3520-A, and potential withholding issues. This can happen inadvertently — for example, when a family names a trusted relative abroad as successor trustee without considering their citizenship or residency status. When advising cross-border families, we recommend including a provision in the trust instrument requiring that any trustee be a U.S. person, with the appointment failing automatically and passing to the next named trustee if that condition is not met.
My estate plan was drafted when I lived abroad. Now I am a U.S. person. Does it still work?
Probably not without review — and potentially not without modification. An estate plan drafted under a foreign legal system may remain legally valid, but legal validity is only one question. The more important questions are: Does it produce the intended tax result under U.S. law? Does it account for worldwide estate tax exposure as a U.S. person? Are there reporting obligations associated with any trusts, foundations, or entities in the plan? Does it interact correctly with U.S. forced heirship rules — or lack thereof — compared to the original jurisdiction? The plan should be reviewed by U.S. tax and estate planning counsel as soon as possible after U.S. residency or citizenship is established. Moving assets or restructuring hastily before a review is one of the most common mistakes — the right first step is to map the current structure and understand its tax consequences before taking any action.
My spouse is not a U.S. citizen. How does that affect our estate planning?
Significantly. The unlimited marital deduction — which allows U.S. spouses to transfer unlimited assets to each other free of estate and gift tax — does not apply to transfers to a non-citizen spouse. Instead, estate tax transfers to a non-citizen surviving spouse must pass through a Qualified Domestic Trust (QDOT) to qualify for a deferred estate tax marital deduction, and lifetime gifts to a non-citizen spouse are subject to an annual exclusion that is higher than the standard annual exclusion but still limited (currently $175,000 in 2024, indexed for inflation). Mixed-nationality couples should review their estate plan — including beneficiary designations, joint ownership of assets, and retirement account beneficiary designations — to ensure it accounts for these rules. Couples with assets in both the U.S. and a foreign country should also analyze how the U.S. estate and gift tax framework interacts with any foreign marital property regime or prenuptial agreement.
What are the signs that our family's estate plan needs a cross-border review?
The most important sign is that the family has connections to more than one country — whether through citizenship, residency, assets, or family relationships. Specific triggers include: a planned or recent move across borders; a family member who has changed citizenship or residency; assets held in multiple countries; a foreign trust, foundation, or holding company; a non-U.S. spouse or beneficiary; a relative named as trustee or executor who lives abroad; a recent inheritance from a foreign estate; or an estate plan that was drafted in a different jurisdiction or many years ago before a move. Major life events — marriage, divorce, the birth of children, a liquidity event, or a death — are also natural prompts to review the plan. Cross-border families should treat geography changes as a standing instruction to review the entire structure.
International Trust & Estate Planning Checklist
A practical guide for internationally mobile individuals and families reviewing their estate plan, foreign trusts, and wealth transfer structures for cross-border tax efficiency and compliance.
This checklist is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed by use of this resource. Every client’s situation is unique — this checklist does not substitute for a comprehensive analysis by qualified counsel. All engagements are subject to a conflicts check and execution of an engagement letter.