We’ll need the following information to set up your South Dakota non-grantor trust so that it qualifies for QSBS stacking and state-tax exemption and satisfies other state and federal requirements. The purpose of this document is to get you started; we’ll provide more information on each of these requirements as you’re going through the onboarding workflow.

1. Personal information. We’ll collect background data on you and, if married, your spouse. This will include your legal names, birth dates, address, citizenship status, and a few other similar items. We’ll use this information to perform the required background checks and, where relevant, to open trust accounts and transfer assets.
2. Beneficiaries. We’ll need to know whom you want to name as the ultimate recipient of trust assets. This can be your existing children, your future descendants, any other living person, or a combination. Because this is a non-grantor trust, you will be giving up ownership over trust assets, and the named beneficiaries will be the recipients when all is said and done. (You will, of course, have some say over when they receive assets and how much. We’ll explain how you’ll exercise that influence — via your trustee — as part of the trust administration onboarding process.
3. Contingent beneficiaries. Non-Grantor Trusts can last virtually forever, which means that it’s possible that your trust will run out of beneficiaries before it runs out of money — if your last descendant dies without heirs of his or her own. To plan for that event, we’ll need to know what you would like to happen to the remaining principal. This can be all of your relatives, by blood or marriage; specifically named people; or a charity.
4. Separate trusts or pot? If you are naming more than one beneficiary, you may set up a separate trust for each person or one “pot” trust. Doing it as separate trusts reduces friction between beneficiaries, makes it easier to track how much each beneficiary has received from his or her trust, and may generate tax savings down the line. A pot trust lowers upfront administrative costs and keeps the class of beneficiaries open so that unborn children (in the case of trusts for the benefit of your children) or unborn grandchildren (in the case of trusts that are for the exclusive benefit of your grandchildren) can share in the benefits equally with those already born.
5. Trustee. The role of the trustee is to manage the trust’s investments (or hire an investment advisor who will do so) and determine when to make distributions to the beneficiary (with the grantor’s guidance). We need to know who you would like to act as trustee. For tax reasons, neither you nor your spouse should act as trustee, though you will have the power to remove and replace the trustee at any time. The trustee can be Valur or another corporate trustee; another family member; a friend; or even the beneficiary themselves (if they’re over age 18). In all cases, though, you’ll need to select a trustee who can perform the role in a trustworthy manner, and they’ll need to be in a state with advantageous rules. (If you choose Valur, we set the trust up in South Dakota.)

About Valur

We’ve built a platform to give everyone access to the tax and wealth-building tools typically reserved for wealthy individuals with a team of accountants and lawyers. We make it simple and seamless for our customers to take advantage of these hard-to-access tax-advantaged structures. With Valur, you can build your wealth more efficiently at less than half the cost of competitors. 

From picking the best strategy to taking care of all the setup and ongoing overhead, we make things simple. The results are real: We have helped create more than $3 billion in additional wealth for our customers. If you would like to learn more, please feel free to explore our Learning Center. You can also see your potential tax savings with our online calculators or schedule a time to chat with us!