While America’s criminal justice system does not judge people to be guilty until proven guilty (even though it has no compunction with adjudicating innocent people as being guilty), Jeffrey Epstein sure does look like a bad, bad dude. The “Pimp of the Rich and Famous” would have been charged with human trafficking, statutory rape, prostitution, and likely many more demented crimes which thinking of would cause most decent people to throw up in their mouth a little bit. His trial and any plea bargain could have been an enormous bombshell that would have ruined at least a few people with HUGE shoes to fill. It was in this context that Jeffrey Epstein somehow hung himself from a five-foot high bunkbed with a sheet two weeks after a prior “suicide” attempt, two days after he had written a trust supposedly protecting his money, and we are supposed to believe two guards slept through this affair.
For those of you who go Cuckoo for CoCoConspiracies, generally I would avoid you like I would a hippee wanting to give me a hug after a five-day music festival. But I’ll jump on your crazy train this one time and agree that something is wrong with this suicide story, and I will do so based on a fact I am actually qualified to speak on: The “deathbed” Epstein Trust.
When most people think of Trusts (the written document, not the thing most people have lost in our politicians and mass media), we think of some ultra-impervious suit of armor created in a government laboratory that can protect someone’s assets from creditors, government, and Satan himself when we go to Hell. We also assume we can just sign on the dotted line and everything is taken care of. Indeed, when I read on the Huffington Post that some estate lawyers say that Epstein’s creation of the trust could make it more difficult for his victims to sue his estate, I know something is off because it just isn’t true.
First, the vast majority of trusts do NOT afford protection to the creator of the Trust. While most trusts do protect future beneficiaries (such as children) from their creditors, your Trust rarely protects you from your creditors. Yes, certain Asset Protection Trusts can shield you from some creditor liability, but those types of Trusts constitute about 1/10th of a percent of Trusts actually created. “Asset Protection Trusts” are only available in a few states like Nevada and Delaware, plus they require you to hold the assets in the Trust one to two years – the “seasoning period” – before they are protected, not one to two days as took place with Epstein. So, something smells fishy.
Which brings us to point two: You have to fund a Trust with property. If I have the “Daniel Timins Trust” but have no assets owned by the “Daniel Timins Trust” (deeds to real estate, brokerage accounts, business interests, etc.) the Trust has no property that it owns. In addition, any legitimately funded asset protection trust has barely begun the one to two-year seasoning period. Also, as many estate attorneys and estate clients know, it takes a good deal of time and effort for a third party to transfer assets into that Trust and limiting that period to a few days risks a lot of mistakes taking place. Again, something is not right with the suicide picture.
In addition, even if these funds where somehow successfully transferred to a Trust, all states have “fraudulent conveyance” laws that create timeframes when a plaintiff can recapture money moved by their defendant with the intent of protecting it from a lawsuit.
Lastly, the assumption that a plaintiff cannot get access to a Trust account because it is uber-secret is also a fallacy. Sure, if you are some schmoe trying to pry into your neighbor’s affairs but don’t want to pay an attorney to find out about their Trust funds you will likely have no clue of their existence. But we are talking about Jeffrey Epstein here, a multi-millionaire who was Disgusting Convict #1 at the time of his death. To say that any Judge with have a gram of decency on their waist would not sign a judicial order allowing the release of his tax returns and requiring Epstein’s financial institutions to divulge all information to under aged sex slave victims is just nuts.
So, I’m joining the conspiracy bandwagon this one time, and saying Jeffrey Epstein was murdered because (amongst other things) the facts surrounding the creation of his Trust are too suspicious. While the media’s and public’s misperception of Trusts would feed the suicide narrative, most decent estate attorneys must have been wondering what the big deal was. And while I can’t claim I am always right, I appear to have been correct about my belief that Aretha Franklin had a Will, though her estate looks like a cakewalk compared to the legal affairs awaiting the Epstein estate.
