USA – OKLAHOMA Law and Practice Contributed by: Aaron Bundy and Danya Bundy, Bundy
responsibility for the delegated function to the agent. Directed arrangements allocating investment or distri - bution authority to designated power holders now rest on the Uniform Directed Trust Act, effective 1 Novem - ber 2024, which makes the trust director a fiduciary and protects the directed trustee who complies with a direction. Fiduciary liability insurance rounds out the protection in professional administrations. 6.3 Fiduciary Regulation Fiduciary investment is governed by the Oklahoma Uniform Prudent Investor Act, 60 O.S. Sections 175.60 to 175.72. The Act requires a trustee to invest and manage trust assets as a prudent investor would, considering the purposes, terms, distribution require - ments, and other circumstances of the trust, and to exercise reasonable care and caution in doing so. Individual investments are judged in the context of the portfolio as a whole rather than in isolation, and no category of investment is imprudent per se. The Act imposes a duty to diversify unless the trus - tee reasonably determines that the purposes of the trust are better served without diversification, along with duties of loyalty and impartiality among benefi - ciaries. It is a default regime, so the trust instrument may expand or restrict the standard, and retention language for family assets is common and effective. 6.4 Fiduciary Investment Oklahoma’s standard is modern portfolio theory codi - fied. The prudent investor rule evaluates risk and return at the whole-portfolio level and permits any asset class that fits the strategy. Diversification is required by default, with the statutory exception for special circumstances doing real work in a state where trusts hold family ranches, farmland, minerals, and closely held company stock. Express retention provisions in the instrument remain the best protection for a trustee asked to hold a concentrated legacy asset. Trusts may own active businesses, and many Okla - homa trusts effectively run one. The arrangement is lawful but demands attention to loyalty and prudence, since the trustee wears both fiduciary and manage - ment hats. The cleaner structure interposes a limited liability company with independent or family manage - ment between the trust and operations, supported by
instrument language authorising retention and opera - tion of the business. Delegation to qualified manag - ers, documented monitoring, candid beneficiary com - munication, and fiduciary insurance carry most of the remaining risk. 7. Citizenship and Residency 7.1 Requirements for Domicile, Residency and Citizenship Citizenship is exclusively federal, governed by the Fourteenth Amendment and the Immigration and Nationality Act, and Oklahoma confers no citizenship of its own. The state law questions are domicile and residency. Domicile is physical presence in Oklaho - ma coupled with intent to remain, and a person has exactly one domicile at a time. For income tax pur - poses a resident is a person domiciled in the state, and residency determinations look past declarations to objective conduct, including homestead filings, voter registration, driver’s licenses, vehicle registra - tions, and the actual centre of family and business life. Domicile at death fixes primary probate jurisdiction over the estate. In a contested matter the fact-finding is granular, and clients establishing or abandoning Oklahoma connections should build a clean record from the first day rather than reconstruct one later. 7.2 Expeditious Citizenship There is no expeditious or investment-based route to citizenship through Oklahoma, because no state can confer citizenship. Naturalisation runs through federal law and USCIS on federal timelines. The investment- linked immigration option is the federal EB-5 immi - grant investor program, which can lead to permanent residence and eventually naturalisation. The current minimums are USD800,000 in targeted employment areas and USD1,050,000 otherwise, and EB-5 qualify - ing investments can be located in Oklahoma projects. State residency affects tax status and probate juris - diction, described in 7.1 Requirements for Domicile, Residency and Citizenship , but it has no bearing on citizenship itself.
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