A Trust Relationship Saves Aunt’s TILA, RESPA and FDCPA Claims from Dismissal
May 20, 2020
Authored by: Jim Goldberg
The Ninth Circuit held, in a matter of first impression, that a trust created by an individual for tax and estate tax planning purposes does not lose all state and federal consumer disclosure protections when it seeks to finance repairs to a personal residence for the trust beneficiary, rather than for the trustee herself; instead, the loan transaction remains a “consumer credit transaction” under TILA, RESPA and California’s Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Gillian, Trustee of Lou Easter Ross Revocable Trust v. Levine, — F.3d — (9th Cir. 2020), 2020 WL 1861977 (4/14/2020).
Acting in her capacity as trustee of a trust created by her dead sister, the plaintiff obtained a loan to make repairs to a personal residence occupied by her sister’s daughter. The district court held, on a motion to dismiss, that because the plaintiff borrower did not intend to live in the house, the loan was not a consumer credit transaction, which TILA defines as a loan extended to a natural person “primarily for personal, family or household purposes.” Both TILA and RESPA are inapplicable to “credit transactions involving extensions of credit primarily for business, commercial, or agricultural purposes.” The Rosenthal Act similarly applies to debt “due or owing from a natural person by reason of a consumer credit transaction,” which it defines identically to TILA.