With the ownership of firearms comes an enormous responsibility. Unless you sell or give away your gun collection in your lifetime, your guns will definitely outlive you.
Ohio NFA Gun Trusts protect your heirs so that during your lifetime and in the event of your death, your beneficiaries don’t unwittingly break Federal Law which carries a fine up to $250,000 and 10 years in prison. A well-drafted Gun Trust, a revocable trust, removes the risk of transferring firearms to your beneficiaries.
Because it is a revocable trust, it operates like all Revocable Living Trusts. It gives you the flexibility to appoint any Trustee (generally it is you). The Trustee has the power to administer trust assets on behalf of the beneficiaries. After this is established, you can transfer all your firearms into the trust. If you are going to acquire a new firearm, you buy it in the trust.
Your Gun Trust can be quite flexible which means that during your lifetime you can add or subtract any weapons or individuals from the trust. Also, guns acquired through a revocable trust can legally bypass a lot of ATF application requirements such as fingerprints, photographs, and CLEO signatures. Additionally, the government does not need to be provided with this information.
Another aspect of Gun Trusts is when a corporation is being set up as the registered owner. In most states trusts are private which means they do not require public funding. Because corporations, which are public, do require filing, maintenance fees and are taxed, setting up a Gun Trust would be advantageous. It would remove your trust from being public to being private.
Some other benefits of owning your firearms in a Gun Trust are:
1. It can be used to own non NFA firearms as well as NFA Firearms.
2. It is more private to transfer ownership of your firearms.
3. A well-drafted Gun Trust provides guidance to help beneficiaries stay in compliance with the laws.
It is important to note that it is never a good idea to draft your own Gun Trust from a do-it-yourself website. Many of these don’t create valid trusts, and most of them give no guidance to help your beneficiaries from unwittingly breaking the law.
For an all-encompassing and correctly crafted Gun Trust call the Kabb Law Firm – 216-991-5222.
