QUESTION

What to do with my trust?

Asked on Jan 09th, 2017 on Trusts and Estates - New York
More details to this question:
My great-grandfather left a massive trust for us. We are not sure what to do with it. Until recently, we didnot know that my great-grandmother was married to my great-grandfather. They got angry with each other , divorced and my great-grandmother just never mentioned him. Now it turns out that we have this trust, and that we are all Americans, and we didnot know it. As it turns out my great-grandfather was powerful enough to make it a law to make us all U.S. citizens regardless of where we were born.So what steps do we have to take? My great-grandfather sealed our birth certificates and we have no way of getting. If you want to get an U.S. passport you need a birth certificate, right? So what steps do we have to take regarding our trust?
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2 ANSWERS

Estate Planning Attorney serving New York, NY
1 Award
Your issues are unrelated.  The trust has nothing to do with citizenship or birth certificates.  If you have the trust documents, a lawyer can tell you what to do.  As far as a birth certificate, the process to get it depends on where you were born.  While money can help a citizenship application, that is not needed if you were born in the USA.
Answered on Jan 11th, 2017 at 8:18 AM

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Civil Rights Law Attorney serving Rockville Centre, NY
1 Award
Sounds like you have several issues here- and much more information is needed in order to address any of them. How do you know there is a "massive trust"? Who are the beneficiaries, and who is the trustee? If you have the trust agreement, that is the document that tells the trustee (the person in charge of administering the trust) what to do or what can be done with the trust. However, reading a trust agreement is not a substitute for some guidance from an attorney.  Finally, if you have good reason to believe that you are the beneficiary of a trust and the trustee is not providing you with money/assets to which you are entitled, or information regarding that trust, a court can compel the trustee to give an accounting, and many other types of relief, to beneficiaries of the trust. With regard to the rest of your questions, birth certificates are almost always sealed in connection with adoptions, although laws are being proposed in many places, including New York, to give adopted children the right to their original birth certificate information. You did not mention if this is an adoption situation.  If you were born outside of the US, you would need to seek counsel in your place of birth regarding the unsealing of your birth certificate. As far as passports, you can contact your local passport office for information about all the documents required for getting a passport.   
Answered on Jan 10th, 2017 at 3:37 PM

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