- 19 -
transferred assets by virtue of her ability to control those
assets, including the management and disposition thereof.
Initially, as the direct general partner of RLP, decedent was
given the right by the RLP partnership agreement to cause a
distribution of RLP’s net cashflow to RLP’s partners in
proportion to their partnership interests, and she was given the
power “to do anything reasonably connected” with RLP’s assets.
Later, as an indirect (through the 1991 revocable trust) general
partner of RLP, decedent continued to retain that right and power
directly in that she was a cotrustee of the 1991 revocable trust
and, most importantly, she had the absolute power to revoke the
trust as if it had never been created in the first place. Thus,
at all relevant times, decedent held both a majority interest in
RLP and the powers incident to serving as RLP’s general partner.
We also find as a fact that decedent and her sons agreed
impliedly that the transferred assets and the income earned
therefrom would continue to be used for decedent’s pecuniary
benefit. The transfer of practically all of decedent’s wealth to
RLP left decedent with insufficient liquid assets with which to
pay her living expenses. The estate asserts that decedent’s
assets were sufficient because Trust B had a corpus of $2.5
million at the time of the transfer and decedent’s sons, as
cotrustees, could distribute Trust B’s corpus to pay decedent’s
Page: Previous 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Next
Last modified: March 27, 2008