Attorney addresses ABA Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section 2018 Spring Symposia

Dickinson Wright Attorney James P. Spica addressed the American Bar Association (ABA) Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section 2018 Spring Symposia in Orlando, Fla., as a member of the Symposia CLE faculty on May 10. His topic was the Uniform Directed Trust Act (UDTA). The UDTA has been promulgated by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, also known as the Uniform Law Commission (ULC).

Spica is a ULC Commissioner (appointed by the State of Michigan’s bipartisan Legislative Council) and served as the ABA Advisor to the ULC Drafting Committee that developed the UDTA. He is also the chair of the Divided and Directed Trusteeships Committee of the Council of the Probate and Estate Planning Section of the State Bar of Michigan, which has developed a legislative proposal to enact the UDTA in Michigan as an amendment to the Michigan Trust Code. (That proposal is currently being prepared in the form of bill requests by the Michigan Legislative Service Bureau.)

Spica is the principal author of the Michigan Personal Property Trust Perpetuities Act and of Michigan’s multi-statute “trust decanting” regime. In addition to serving as the ABA advisor to the ULC Directed Trust Drafting Committee, he served on the ad hoc committee of the ABA Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section that drafted the Section's response to the Treasury Department's request (IRS Notice 2011-101) for comments on the tax implications of trust decanting. He is a member of the ULC’s Fiduciary Income and Principal Act (UFIPA) Drafting Committee, a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), a former member of the ACTEC State Laws Committee, a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the Michigan Commission on Uniform State Laws, Chair of the UFIPA Committee of the Council of the Probate and Estate Planning Section of the State Bar of Michigan (Council), a former member of the Council (2006-2015), and a current member of the Probate and Estate Planning Advisory Board of Michigan’s Institute of Continuing Legal Education.

As a Member in Dickinson Wright’s Detroit office, Spica focuses his practice on estate and tax planning, trust banking, and trust litigation. Listed in Chambers High Net Worth Guide, The Best Lawyers in America, Michigan Super Lawyers, Leading Lawyers, and DBusiness Top Lawyers, he is the author of the Commentaries on the Michigan Powers of Appointment Act, the Michigan Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities, and the Personal Property Trust Perpetuities Act in the Michigan Probate Sourcebook (3rd ed. 2018), of the decanting chapter in Trust Administration Under the Michigan Trust Code (2010 & Supp.), and of the wills chapters in the Michigan Estate Planning Handbook (3rd ed. 2016 & Supp.). He clerked for Hon. Richard C. Wilbur on the United States Tax Court (1985) and taught jurisprudence, taxation, trusts, and decedents’ estates as an Assistant/Associate Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy (1989-2000, tenured 1996).