Peter Judson v. Robert I. Friedman

At the center of this case is whether a Settlor of an irrevocable trust has a 14th Amendment right to set the terms for their own estate without fear of a fiduciary using future laws to usurp those very terms and whether it is necessary for the Courts to have a national standard in place to determine if the fiduciary has abused his or her discretion. The law at issue, the UNIFORM PRINCIPAL AND INCOME ACT (UPIA), has been adopted in thirty six states plus the District of Columbia and modified versions have been adopted in the remaining fourteen states. As such this is a national issue for state Courts to wrestle with and uniformity has not been the standard to date. The disputes at hand are:

1. Whether the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (MA SJC) erred in its retroactive application of the 2006 Massachusetts' version of the UPIA, the MASSACHUSETTS PRUDENT INVESTOR ACT (MPIA) to two 1992 irrevocable trusts under a 1977 Will and whether that application is an unjustified taking of the Petitioner’s property, a usurping of the Settlor's right to set the terms of her own legacy, and as such a violation of the 14th Amendment.

2. Whether the MA SJC erred in requiring the Settlor the insurmountable burden of seeing into the future, mandating the specific words from the 2006 MPIA be included into her 1977 Will executed twenty nine years earlier.