USA – ARKANSAS Law and Practice Contributed by: Aaron Bundy and Danya Bundy, Bundy
federal Corporate Transparency Act was narrowed substantially in March 2025, when FinCEN issued an interim final rule exempting domestic companies from beneficial ownership reporting and limiting the regime to foreign reporting companies. The rule had not been finalised as of mid-2026 and constitutional litigation continues, so we treat the domestic exemption as cur - rent law and watch it. Arkansas maintains no public beneficial ownership register, and trusts are not recorded instruments. Entity filings disclose officers and registered agents, rather than owners. The state’s transparency energy has been directed at foreign ownership of land, where investigation and enforcement are active and the fed - eral AFIDA report now has a state copy. Land records themselves are public, as everywhere. The result is a workable balance. Legitimate family privacy in enti - ties and trusts remains intact, while land ownership by restricted foreign parties draws real scrutiny. 2. Succession 2.1 Cultural Considerations in Succession Planning Arkansas succession planning is shaped by land. Farms and timber tracts are held across multiple generations, and families identify with the land itself rather than its balance sheet value. The controlling instinct is to keep it intact and in the family. It collides with modern estate sizes and absent heirs, so much of the legal work carried out is about building struc - tures, typically family limited liability companies with buyout mechanics that let the land stay whole while ownership adjusts. Parallel to the agricultural base is substantial corporate and entrepreneurial wealth, concentrated in the northwest part of the state, where executives and vendors hold equity compensation and private business interests that require an entirely different planning vocabulary. The generational dynamics are familiar. Founders and family elders hold control late, and information is closely guarded. Family meetings tend to happen only after a health event forces one, and it is preferable to push for the earlier, cheaper conversation, because the plan explained around a kitchen table rarely gets
litigated. Discretion is a cultural value, and clients prefer structures that stay out of the public record, which makes funded revocable trusts and unrecorded governance agreements an easy sell. Charitable giv - ing is strong and frequently faith-based, and commu - nity institutions figure prominently in Arkansas estate plans. 2.2 International Planning The state’s corporate economy has made internation - al planning routine rather than exotic. Families hold assets in multiple countries, and heirs live abroad. Income and transfer tax treaties are federal, so the treaty network applies uniformly, and Arkansas adds no transfer tax layer of its own. The recurring issues are practical. A non-citizen surviving spouse needs qualified domestic trust provisions to preserve the marital deduction, since the deduction is deferred rather than forgiven. Annual exclusion gifts to a non- citizen spouse are capped at USD194,000 for 2026. Foreign heirs of agricultural land trigger the restric - tions described in 1.5 Taxation of Real Estate Owned by Non-Residents and Non-Citizens , and the plan should solve that problem in advance with entity structuring, directed sales, or substituted assets. Families with multi-country assets need one con - trolling plan coordinated with situs wills where local law requires them, and marital agreements executed abroad should be reviewed against Arkansas enforce - ability standards before anyone relies on them. 2.3 Forced Heirship Laws Arkansas has no forced heirship in the civil law sense, but it retains something older that operates similarly for spouses. It is among the last states where dower and curtesy survive. A surviving spouse married to the decedent continuously for more than one year may elect to take against the will under Section 28-39-401 of the Arkansas Code Annotated and receive dower or curtesy as if the decedent had died intestate, plus homestead rights and allowances. With surviving chil - dren, that means a one-third life estate in real property and one-third of personal property absolutely. With no children, the electing spouse takes half the realty, in fee where newly acquired, and half the personality as against the will, reduced to one-third as against creditors. These rights sit outside the will and cannot
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