[extropy-chat] Cryogenics Economics- Estate Tax deferral?

[David Lubkin]

Mike Lorrey wrote:

>How is it that the Rockefellers, Kennedys, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and
>other assorted trust fund babies I run into occasionally up here live
>off their family trusts, if they are not perpetual?

In some cases, there's one trust, and we're still within its lawful 
lifetime. In other families, a separate trust is set up for each child, or 
each person's children, at an optimal time for tax purposes, fed with money 
from another trust or from non-trust holdings.

Indefinite continuity requires an on-going commitment from the living.

I wrote:

 > That's different. Charitable trusts are exempt from the Rule of
 > Perpetuities.

Mike replied:

>At Cornish town meeting yesterday, a Rockefeller offered to buy the
>town a new police station if it gave him an old church that was just
>donated to it. He wrote a check there on his family trust (THE
>Rockefeller Trust). Don't try to tell me this isn't possible. It
>happens with these uber-rich all the time.

One of the dodges the rich get away with is creating a charitable trust and 
then influencing where the money goes. As in the story of the day, wherein 
Teresa Heinz Kerry has the Heinz Foundation give $1.5M a year to the Tides 
Center to fund anti-Bush initiatives, like the current effort to create a 
controversy over a 9/11 reference in a Bush campaign ad.

In your Rockefeller instance, the check might have been drawn on his 
personal trust or he may have drawing privileges "for charitable purposes" 
on the Rockefeller Brothers Fund or the Rockefeller Family Fund.

Yes, there are options available to the uber-rich that might be useful to a 
cryonaut. But I wouldn't count on being able to use any of them without 
uber-resources to back you up.

I wrote:

 > You could, perhaps, create a charitable trust for the benefit of
 > cryonauts *as a class*, to be spent on medical research leading
 > to reanimation, medical treatment in the form of reanimation and
 > restoration of corpsicles, and our financial relief as indigent
 > newcomers.

Mike replied:

>In these circumstances, you set up a trust to benefit members of your
>family as a class.

My guess is that if you tried, the courts would toss it out as fraudulent.

         :
>So in essence, legally speaking, you aren't 'getting it back later',
>since the legal person DAVID LUBKIN is dead, officially, and the death
>certificate says so. The guy who receives your memory, skills, etc. is
>legally only your clone. You may believe that he is you (and he may be
>believe that he is you), but the law does not.
         :

We don't have a clue as to what the legal framework will be under which 
corpsicles will be reanimated.
Perhaps, as some sf writers have speculated, we will be considered property 
or non-sentient animals, in someone's private collection.


-- David Lubkin.