I have several items on one trust. How hard would it be to take them off that trust and put them on another 3 trusts I have. But could I keep them while the paper work went through right. I wouldn't have to give them to a dealer to do the paper work right Since I'm just moving from one trust to another. Would i have to do a 4473 on myself again.

You can do it completely yourself, but you will have to pay $200 for each firearm and file a form4 for each and wait for ATF approval.

So they will stay on the original trust until they are transfered  to the new one and I can keep them at home Right. How do I put it another form 4 and sent it in

Correct.  If you are a trustee/trustor on both the original and new trusts you can maintain possession the entire time.  You simply file a Form 4 with the original trust as the "transferor" and the new trust as the "transferee".  When the stamp comes backs nothing changes other than moving the asset from one Schedule A to another.

Great thanks

What's to say that you don't have three completely identical but separate trusts - sharing the same name, execution date, etc. ?

Then your estate will be a mess when you die.

Are there specific issues?

I agree that generally it could lead to some minor confusion at first, but as long as you document what item or items are in each trust it should not matter at the end.

Especially since you can simply do a 'Restatement of Trust' for each trust at any time to make things more clear.

So your saying with these identical trusts. Just divide your nfa items up on them at you see fit on the sch A.

Then if do a Restatement of Trust if need be for each trust uou have items on to clarify the changes to each trust.

How at that point would that work with atf. Would you need to send atf a copy of the Restatement of Trusts explaining what you have done.

What I can say for sure is that you can change your trust all you want after your transfer is approved with the ATF, and you do not need to notify them at all.

You can't transfer an item from one trust to another without ATF approval and paying the tax. If you sent in a schedule A to the ATF showing progressive adds to trust with each new transfer, the ATF will have documentation that it was in fact a single trust with multiple items.

I am just theorizing that one could have created multiple identical trusts with the same name on the same date, have approval to transfer items to those various trusts by the ATF. If those are all true, then you could potentially have 10 items in 10 identical but individual trusts.

Creating your trust under the laws of Virginia helps here, since no notary is needed and you could easily create 100 trusts in a single day without help from a third party.

Ok since I summitted my trust for 10 nfa items at once. Since only my trust and sch A would be the only one having nfa items listed on it. I have the only copy of the sch A listing nfa items. Atf's copy of my sch A they got with my trust was blank when I sent it in with all the forum 4s because they were all done at the same time.

So other than the tax stamp. There is no other documentation of what could be on my trust.  Because atf has a blank sch A. Thats benefits me then doesn't it.

I think if I buy anything else I'll use a different trust for each new buy. It would be nothing to change the original trust name and have a new trust. For all other nfa buys. That way also there is no documentation other than the stamps.

Except that the NFA Registration database will show your "XYZ Trust" as the registered owner of the items, they keep one of those form 1/4's for record, so they know exactly what your trust owns if it's an NFA item.

You can't just arbitrarily change your trust name either, cause if the "XYZ trust" owns the NFA item and the "XYZ trust" ceases to be, you now are in possession of an NFA item that isn't registered to your now "ABC trust"...


Maybe I missed it in the original post, but is it exactly you are trying to acomplish with wanting to shift around items on trusts, and so on?  You CAN make some changes to a trust without any interaction with the ATF, it all depends what it is you really are trying to accomplish.

Are we sure about that?

What if a person legally changed their name?

Maybe we're assuming, and you actually can.

You certainly can re-name a trust, unless barred by the type of trust or state trust law issues, but what I mean is I don't know how the ATF would handle that should it ever come down to needing to prove your trust's ownership of the item.  What it says in the NFA registry wouldn't match what your trust paperwork says, so if confronted how do you prove legal ownership?  Or is there a way you can ask the ATF to adjust the registry with the new name to keep it up to date, and would they allow it?

I'll admit this is a bit of a new one for me, never heard of someone wanting to do this, and I still don't really understand why you would want to.

No no what I said is that I can take my trust and use its format to creat a new trust. Not alter my original trust. I can just change the names and info and creat a new trust to put new nfa items on.

For instance original trust is arf nfa trust. I can use that trust to creat another trust and name it arf2 nfa trust. By just

Assuming you mean your new trust (arf2) would not have the other NFA from original trust (arf), then yes, you can.

I do recall Silencer Shop offering SingleShot NFA trusts where there is only one NFA item on that list.  Thought it was a interesting concept.  I don't know how they can get away with not listing a benefactor on the trust they send to ATF.  I would love to get my hands on one to look at.

OP- what are you trying to accomplish by transferring some/ all of the items from FM200 NFA Trust to FM#2, FM#3 and FM#4 NFA Trusts?

As I understand it, you have an existing trust, the FM2000 NFA Trust that has 10 NFA transfers approved in its name.  Does the FM2000 NFA Trust have 4 beneficiaries that you are trying to split things up among?  Or are you doing it in an attempt to limit liability exposure?