Trust & Estates Legal, Legislative, and Tax Updates for Nevada’s Private Wealth Destination

Bob Armstrong, Ian DeValliere, and Zach Noland authored the Nevada Trends & Developments chapter of the Private Wealth Guide 2026 published by Chambers and Partners. Their chapter provides updates regarding the legal, legislative, and tax environments that underscore Nevada’s position as a top-tier private wealth destination. Nevada’s combination of perpetuities duration, asset protection, tax efficiency, and privacy remains difficult for competing jurisdictions to match. Nevada also continues to experience an accelerating influx of California and Washington residents generating new Nevada residents, new Nevada-sitused trusts, and existing trusts re-sitused through decanting and modification, all which are reflected in an explosion of Nevada retail and family trust company formations.

The Nevada Trends & Developments chapter is provided below. The chapter is also available here as a PDF and here online.

Chambers and Partners is the premier global resource for providing rankings and insights into the most highly regarded lawyers and law firms in Private Wealth Law. 2026 is the 10^th year McDonald Carano’s Trust & Estates Law Practice has received the highest Band 1 ranking in the High Net Worth Guide. Our specialty credentials include nine McDonald Carano attorneys have an LL.M. in Taxation, two are enrolled in LL.M. Taxation programs, one has an LL.M. in Estate Planning, two are CPAs, one has an M.S. in Accounting-Taxation.

Table of Contents

I. “Permanent” Transfer-Tax Exemption
II. Reasons for Influx of California and Washington Residents
III. Accelerating Formations of Retail and Licensed Family Trust Companies
IV. Newly Effective Amendments from Nevada’s 2025 Legislative Session

• Two-year limitations period for breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims
• Statutory reimbursement power for grantor-trust tax payments
• Specifying when Nevada law governs trust administration
• Trustee exculpation upon an approved and final account

V. Noteworthy Nevada Appellate Decisions

• New York Times Co. v Second Judicial District Court, 141 Nev, Adv Op. 71, 581 P.3d 427 (2025)
• Matter of Richard H. Goldstein Irrevocable Trust, 141 Nev, Adv Op. 41, 575 P.3d 72 (2025)
• Bernstein v Morris, 141 Nev, Adv Op. 72, 584 P.3d 166 (Nev Ct. App. 2025)

VI. Outlook

TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS IN NEVADA PRIVATE WEALTH LAW

Nevada’s appeal as a private-wealth destination continues to grow in 2026, supported by the sustained expansion of global private wealth, a legal environment few states can match, and ready access to international-travel hubs and the major cities of the western United States. Daniel G. Worthington and Mark Merric again ranked Nevada among the top-tier US trust jurisdictions in their biennial Trusts & Estates article “Which Situs Is Best in 2026?” Although Nevada’s top-tier standing seems to have become a settled matter, the past year of private-wealth practice in Nevada was less predictable. Many expected it to be dominated by the long-anticipated (and ultimately averted) federal transfer-tax sunset, but it was instead shaped more by an accelerating influx of California and Washington residents, an explosion of Nevada retail and family trust company formations, newly effective legislation from the 2025 Legislative Session, and a handful of appellate decisions refining the practical limits of Nevada’s privacy and jurisdiction statutes. A discussion of these significant trends follows.

I. A “Permanent” Transfer-Tax Exemption

For several years, the impending expiration of key provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) at the end of 2025 significantly influenced Nevada private-wealth practice. The TCJA had doubled the federal transfer-tax exemptions from USD5 million to USD10 million per individual which, adjusted for inflation, reached USD13.99 million in 2025. Absent Congressional action, these exemptions were expected to revert to approximately USD7 million in 2026, which led to urgent planning among ultra-high net worth families. Nevada practitioners saw a surge in the creation of spousal lifetime access trusts (“SLATs”) and long-term irrevocable dynasty trusts to lock in the higher exemptions, with advisers urging clients to act swiftly because retroactive legislation remained speculative.

Fortunately, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (“OBBBA”), signed into law on 4 July 2025, eliminated the TCJA sunset and established the unified exemption and GST exemption at USD15 million per individual (USD30 million for married couples) beginning 1 January 2026, with inflation indexing resuming in 2027. And, because the increases carry no scheduled expiration date this time, they are commonly described as “permanent” (although, as with any tax provision, a future Congress could revise them).

For Nevada private-wealth practice, the practical effect is a shift in the character of demand rather than a decline. Clients are no longer gifting merely to avoid losing exemption, but the planning rationale that has long favoured Nevada does not depend on any impending sunset. Families that set up SLATs and dynasty trusts in 2024 and 2025 are now turning to administration, funding, and refinement of those structures, and the increased exemption has expanded the headroom for additional gifting into existing Nevada trusts. At the same time, the “permanent” label is understood to be politically contingent: with a potential change in Congress’s balance of power, many advisers continue to counsel clients to use available exemption and build flexibility into their trusts, eg, with powers of appointment, trust protectors, and decanting authority, so plans can adapt if the law changes again.

II. Reasons for Influx of California and Washington Residents

A significant and continuing driver of Nevada private-wealth activity is the migration of California and Washington residents seeking relief from increasingly hostile tax environments. California imposes one of the highest top marginal income-tax rates in the country and, unlike Nevada, taxes trust income based on the residence of trustees and beneficiaries, and this exposure follows many families even after they leave. Adding to the sense of instability is a recurring legislative appetite for taxing wealth directly. Proposals such as Assembly Bill 259, which, together with a proposed constitutional amendment, would have imposed an annual “wealth tax” of up to 1.5% on the worldwide net worth of the ultra-wealthy, and a recently proposed ballot initiative styled the “Billionaire Tax Act” have drawn national attention. None has been enacted yet, but their persistence signals a policy trajectory that many high net worth Californians would rather not wait out.

Washington has created similar pressure through a different mechanism. Although the state has no income tax on wages, it imposes one of the most aggressive transfer-tax and capital-gains-tax regimes in the country. Washington is one of the few states to levy a standalone estate tax, and it does so with a comparatively low exemption of USD3 million per individual with no portability between spouses. That means estates well below the USD15 million federal threshold remain fully exposed at state level. And the rate structure has been volatile: effective 1 July 2025, Washington raised its top marginal estate-tax rate to 35%, briefly the highest state estate-tax rate in the nation, before reversing course by restoring the prior 10-20% schedule effective 1 July 2026. On the income side, Washington’s capital-gains excise tax now reaches 9.9% on long-term gains exceeding USD1 million, and, in March 2026, the state enacted a new 9.9% tax on high earners that is expressly drafted to capture income diverted to incomplete non-grantor trusts. For residents holding concentrated, highly appreciated positions or substantial estates, the combination of a low estate-tax exemption, elevated capital-gains rates, and a newly enacted income tax, layered atop persistent legislative interest in a standalone wealth tax, has made relocation to Nevada an increasingly attractive option.

Nevada offers a stark contrast to both California and Washington: no state income tax, no wealth tax, robust asset protection, and a trust regime built for long-term, multi-generational planning. The result is a steady flow of high-net-worth individuals establishing Nevada residency and situsing new trusts in the state, together with a parallel stream of existing California and Washington trusts being re-sitused to Nevada through decanting and modification. For Nevada trust companies and practitioners, this migration has become one of the most reliable sources of new engagements, and the newly clarified administration criteria under NRS 164.045 make the transition path cleaner for incoming trusts.

III. Accelerating Formations of Retail and Licensed Family Trust Companies

The pace of trust-company formation in Nevada continues to increase. As of April 2026, Nevada is home to 34 licensed retail trust companies with a further 12 applications pending before the Nevada Financial Institutions Division; 42 licensed family trust companies with two applications pending; and seven foreign independent trust companies with one application pending. The number of pending retail trust company applications – more than a third of the retail trust companies currently licensed in Nevada – appears especially telling and signals continued robust growth in that segment.

Comparisons with the other leading trust jurisdictions offer insightful context. South Dakota remains the largest chartered-trust-company market in the country by number of charters and assets, with 114 chartered trust companies at the end of 2025, comprising 69 public and 45 private companies, and slightly more than USD900 billion in trust assets under management, administration, or custody. But South Dakota’s charter count has declined for two consecutive years, from 118 in 2023 to 115 in 2024 and 114 at the end of 2025, reflecting attrition among self-directed IRA custodians, the conversion of a significant crypto custodian to a national trust bank charter, and the exit of several private companies. Nevada’s projected growth of roughly 20% in retail charters over the coming year therefore stands out against a flat-to-declining charter trend in the largest competing jurisdiction.

Wyoming offers a structurally similar menu to Nevada, with chartered public trust companies, regulated chartered family trust companies subject to a USD500,000 minimum-capital requirement, and unregulated private family trust companies with no minimum-capital requirement, all overseen by the Wyoming Division of Banking. Wyoming’s public trust company cohort remains materially smaller than Nevada’s, and its initial capitalisation expectations for public charters, USD1.2 million plus first-year operating expenses, compared to Nevada’s statutory minimum of USD300,000, position the state as a boutique alternative rather than a volume competitor.

Tennessee, whose investment-services-trust and community-property-trust statutes have made the state the most credible southeastern challenger on substantive trust law, charters both public and private trust companies through its Department of Financial Institutions, but its nondepository trust company population likewise remains small relative to Nevada’s, and those companies are supervised within the Department’s Bank Division alongside state-chartered banks rather than under a dedicated trust-company regulatory regime of the kind Nevada and South Dakota maintain.

These comparisons suggest that Nevada is currently the fastest-growing of the major private-wealth jurisdictions in relative terms, pairing South Dakota-calibre substantive trust law with a chartering process, capital requirements, and regulations that families and institutions perceive as rigorous but reasonable and commercially navigable. The confidentiality architecture of NRS Chapter 669A, even as recalibrated by the New York Times decision discussed below, together with the absence of both a Nevada state income tax and a financial-institution tax on trust company net income of the kind South Dakota imposes, continues to distinguish the Nevada charter.

IV. Newly Effective Amendments From the 2025 Legislative Session

The Nevada Legislature recently enacted several amendments of Nevada trust statutes under Title 13 of the Nevada Revised Statutes (“NRS”) proposed by the State Bar of Nevada’s Probate and Trust Section. The amendments became effective on 1 October 2025. A handful stand out for their practical significance to Nevada private-wealth practice.

• Two-year limitations period for breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims

NRS 11.190 was amended to assign a two-year limitations period for breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims not involving fraud or intentional misrepresentation. This resolves a seemingly overbroad precedent in Nevada case law assigning a three-year limitations period. It also brings Nevada into closer competition with South Dakota, on whose equivalent statute of limitations the amendment was modelled. It also codifies a discovery rule: the cause of action accrues when the aggrieved party discovers, or, through the use of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the material facts that constitute the cause of action, whichever occurs earlier. For Nevada-resident fiduciaries with their principal place of business in the state, the change meaningfully shortens the tail of exposure.

• Statutory reimbursement power for grantor-trust tax payments

NRS 163.557 was amended to provide an express, statutory reimbursement power to trustees, making discretionary reimbursement a default power under any Nevada grantor trust that does not provide otherwise. Before its amendment, NRS 163.557 merely provided that a trust instrument may grant a trustee the power to reimburse the settlor for tax payments without liability to any person.

The power to reimburse the settlor of a grantor trust was the subject of a significant IRS memorandum issued on 29 December 2023 (“CCA 202352018”). CCA 202352018 explains that adding a reimbursement power to a trust instrument may constitute a taxable gift from beneficiaries who consent or omit to object to the addition of the reimbursement power. This is of course an undesirable outcome for beneficiaries. Adding a default reimbursement power to grantor trusts via statute does not have the same effect under CCA 202352018 because it obviates the need to add that power to any trust, including an existing trust, that does not expressly disallow reimbursement. The amended statute applies to trusts governed by or principally administered under Nevada law whether created before, on, or after 1 October 2025, subject to a notice-based election out and to guardrails preserving federal tax benefits, and it disqualifies a trustee who is the deemed owner, a beneficiary, or a related or subordinate party from exercising the power. A recently enacted Florida statute provided a model for Nevada’s amendment.

• Specifying when Nevada law governs trust administration

NRS 164.045 was amended to specify when Nevada law governs a trust’s administration. Establishing such criteria is particularly valuable when seeking to decant a foreign-sitused trust under NRS 163.556, which provides that Nevada law need not govern the trust to be decanted but only that the trust must be administered under Nevada law. The amendment provides that Nevada law governs the administration of a trust where the instrument so provides or a person authorised to designate governing law has done so, and, notwithstanding a contrary general choice-of-law provision, while the trust is administered in Nevada, subject to limited exceptions. It also enumerates the trustee-residence and office criteria under which a trust is considered to be administered in the state, reducing uncertainty for out-of-state trusts re-situsing to Nevada.

• Trustee exculpation upon an approved and final account

NRS 165.1214 was amended to clarify the effect of an approved-and-final account by adding an express exculpation provision. Absent fraud or intentional misrepresentation, the trustee is released and discharged from any and all liability to any and all beneficiaries of the trust for whom an account is deemed approved and final, as to all matters set forth in such an account. The amendment also provides by way of cross-reference to related statutes in Title 13 that an account may be approved by virtual representation under a nonjudicial settlement agreement, and that a trust adviser or trust protector may approve an account where notice or information to the beneficiaries has been waived or modified in accordance with NRS 163.004 or it is authorised under the terms of the trust instrument. This amendment, too, brings Nevada into closer competition with South Dakota, on whose equivalent statute the amendment was modelled.

V. Noteworthy Appellate Decisions

Three recent appellate decisions warrant attention. The first two refine the practical boundaries of two features central to Nevada’s value proposition as a private-wealth destination: confidentiality of trust proceedings and the reach of Nevada courts over trustees. The third opens a new avenue of drafting-attorney liability to trust beneficiaries.

• New York Times Co. v Second Judicial District Court, 141 Nev, Adv Op. 71, 581 P.3d 427 (2025)

Granting a petition for writ of mandamus challenging a district court order sealing records and closing proceedings in a trust case, the Nevada Supreme Court held that elective sealing under NRS 164.041 is only “provisional,” after which election the trial court must review each sealed document to determine whether a compelling interest in sealing overcomes the common-law presumption favouring public access to judicial proceedings, and whether a less restrictive alternative (eg, limited redaction) would suffice. The public’s concomitant interest in knowing the parties’ identities and the existence of the case similarly precludes the use of pseudonyms (eg, “Matter of Doe Trust”) in almost all cases.

Although this decision significantly diminishes a party’s ability to seal court filings under NRS 164.041 and almost eliminates the ability to use pseudonyms, experience in the brief period since the decision indicates that courts nonetheless continue to recognise the need to balance privacy interests against the public’s right of access. To serve those interests, courts appear willing to hold closed hearings on motions to seal or redact, receive sensitive documents off the public docket, and allow significant redactions to filings. The practical lesson is that confidentiality in Nevada trust litigation now depends on a properly supported, document-specific showing rather than a unilateral election.

• Matter of Richard H. Goldstein Irrevocable Trust, 141 Nev, Adv Op. 41, 575 P.3d 72 (2025)

Affirming a district court order dismissing a beneficiary’s petition for lack of personal jurisdiction over the trustee, the Nevada Supreme Court held that a court’s in rem jurisdiction over trust property is a necessary but not sufficient condition for jurisdiction over the trust. The court must also have personal jurisdiction over the trustee, which is a matter of minimum contacts with the forum state under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. Because the beneficiary’s petition did not arise out of or relate to the trustee’s contact with Nevada, the trustee lacked sufficient contact with Nevada to be subject to the personal jurisdiction of a Nevada court.

This decision is the third in a series of recent decisions from Nevada appellate courts, following Matter of Paul D. Burgauer Revocable Living Trust and Matter of 23 Partners Trust I, interpreting Nevada’s trust-jurisdiction statute, NRS 164.010, and confirming that personal jurisdiction cannot be granted by statute but is instead a matter of US Constitutional law. For families that wish to retain highly competent trustees who reside beyond Nevada’s borders, this settled line of authority is a feature rather than a defect: the bar for hauling a nonresident trustee into a Nevada court is higher than a purely statutory reading would suggest.

• Bernstein v Morris, 141 Nev, Adv Op. 72, 584 P.3d 166 (Nev Ct. App. 2025)

Reversing a district court order dismissing a trust beneficiary’s legal-malpractice claim against the drafting attorney, the Nevada Court of Appeals held that a trust beneficiary may have standing to sue the drafting attorney for legal malpractice under a newly adopted multi-factor test balancing intent of the transaction, foreseeability of harm, the beneficiary’s injury, proximity of cause, the policy of preventing future harm, and the burden on the legal profession. The settlor’s use of a power of appointment was not in the settlor’s fiduciary capacity, so the common-law limitation on the duty of an attorney representing a fiduciary, breach of which duty would entitle only the fiduciary to sue, did not apply.

This decision adopts a balancing test from California case law supporting third-party standing in a legal-malpractice suit, without which a beneficiary’s claim could be dismissed if the beneficiary lacks a direct, attorney-client relationship with the attorney. For drafting attorneys and the trust companies that work alongside them, Bernstein expands potential exposure, although only marginally, and careful documentation of settlor intent, engagement scope, and the capacity in which powers are exercised now takes on additional importance.

VI. Outlook

The past year’s developments point in a consistent direction. Two forces stand out. First, an accelerating influx of California and Washington residents continues to generate new Nevada residents, new Nevada-sitused trusts, and a steady stream of existing trusts re-sitused through decanting and modification, all which are reflected in the pace of Nevada trust-company formations. Second, Nevada’s statutory framework grew incrementally more competitive while its appellate courts drew sharper lines around what the state’s privacy and jurisdiction statutes can and cannot do. The elimination of the federal transfer-tax sunset has lifted the deadline and resolved the uncertainty that drove much recent private-wealth activity, but it has not diminished the structural reasons families choose Nevada. If anything, a more stable federal exemption lets clients plan on the merits rather than the calendar, and Nevada’s combination of perpetuities duration, asset protection, tax efficiency, and privacy remains difficult for competing jurisdictions to match.

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