Can a foreign estate be re-domiciled in the U.S?

The Gates family are a London based family.  They made their original wealth from a manufacturing business in Newcastle, which they sold 40 years ago.  Today all of their capital is managed directly or indirectly via their family office.

At the time of the liquidity event the family structured their affairs through Guernsey.

The Gates had one daughter, Penny, who moved to the U.S. 15 years ago.  She is married to a U.S. Citizen and lives with her U.S. Citizen children in Santa Barbara California.

After consideration of the challenges of managing a foreign non grantor trust that was established to support a global family office, the trustee of the trust determined that it was best to re-domicile the assets of the trust from Guernsey to Delaware.

Through careful planning the trustee was able to do this without triggering a liability for tax, obtain a step up in basis on the assets of trust to market value at the time of the restructure, and remove any risk that the assets of the trust would be subject to penalty tax under the undistributed net income rules.