Every so often a client gets their trust home, reads it carefully (good for you — you should), and calls the office with some version of the same question:

“Ledly, why on earth is John D. Rockefeller in my trust? I’ve never met the man, and I’m fairly sure he’s been dead for a while.”

He has. Since 1937, in fact. And no, your family is not secretly related to the oil dynasty. But the Rockefeller name shows up on purpose in nearly every trust I draft, and the reason is a small piece of legal engineering that quietly protects your family for as long as the law will allow. Let me explain.

Trusts can’t actually last forever

Most people assume a trust can go on indefinitely — grandkids, great-grandkids, on down the line forever. In Arkansas, that’s not quite true. Our state still enforces something lawyers call the rule against perpetuities. In plain English: the law won’t let you tie up property in a trust forever. At some point, the trust has to wrap up and the property has to vest in someone.

The classic version of the rule sets that outer limit as a strange-sounding formula: a trust can last for the lifetimes of certain people who are alive when the trust is created, plus 21 years after the last of them dies.

Those “certain people” are what we call measuring lives. They don’t get anything from your trust. They aren’t beneficiaries. They never see a dime. They are simply the human stopwatch the law uses to measure how long your trust is allowed to run.

Yes, there’s a movie about this (and it’s actually good)

If a rule with a name like “the rule against perpetuities” sounds like the most mind-numbing topic in all of law school — you’re not wrong. It has that reputation, and it’s earned. But here’s a fun bit of trivia: there’s a genuinely good movie built around exactly this concept.

It’s called The Descendants, and it stars George Clooney. Clooney plays the trustee of an old family trust that owns a breathtaking, enormously valuable stretch of untouched land in Hawaii — and the trust is coming to its legal end. As the trustee, he’s the one in charge of deciding what happens to that property and how it gets distributed. The entire story turns on a trust winding down and the person responsible for closing it out. It’s the rare film that takes the driest corner of estate law and makes it genuinely moving. If you want to feel the real stakes behind these clauses, it’s two hours well spent.

Pick the right stopwatch, and your trust lasts longer

Here’s where it gets practical. If the trust’s clock runs until the last measuring life dies plus 21 years, then naming a large group of people — rather than just one or two — buys your family more time. The more people in the group, the later that final death is likely to occur, and the longer your trust can keep doing its job.

So a careful drafter wants measuring lives who are:

• Numerous, so the last survivor lives a good long while.
• Identifiable and well-documented, so that decades from now, a trustee can actually prove when the last one died.

That second point matters more than people realize. It does your grandchildren no good to have a clever clause if nobody can ever pin down the date that starts the 21-year countdown. You need a family whose births and deaths are recorded, public, and beyond dispute.

Enter the Rockefellers

The descendants of John D. Rockefeller are about as well-documented a family as exists in America. There are a lot of them, they’re spread across the country, and their vital records are meticulously kept and publicly available. They’re a famous, prolific, easy-to-track family — which makes them the perfect human stopwatch.

That’s the entire reason they’re in your trust. We use a group of measuring lives that includes the living descendants of your grandparents, the living descendants of your spouse’s grandparents, and the descendants of John D. Rockefeller who are alive when you pass away. Whoever among that whole group lives the longest, plus 21 years, is how long your trust is permitted to run.

It’s a belt-and-suspenders move. Your own family lines anchor it close to home; the Rockefeller line stretches the allowable term out as far as Arkansas law will permit and gives any future trustee a rock-solid, provable date to work from.

Why Rockefeller, and not the Queen

You don’t have to use the Rockefellers, of course. This is a drafting choice, and attorneys have their favorites. For generations the classic move — especially among English and English-trained lawyers — was a “royal lives clause,” measuring the trust against the living descendants of the British crown. The royal family is large, famous, and impeccably documented, which makes them ideal for the job, and plenty of American attorneys still reach across the pond and use the Queen of England’s descendants for exactly that reason.

I go in a different direction, and it’s a deliberate one. I’m an American, and I have a deep respect for the kind of grit, self-made enterprise, and entrepreneurship that John D. Rockefeller represents. If I’m going to anchor your family’s legacy to someone’s bloodline for the better part of a century, I’d rather it be an American family that built something from nothing. Same legal horsepower as the royal option — but a measuring stick I’m proud to put in an Arkansas trust.

To be crystal clear: the Rockefellers get nothing. They have no interest in your trust, no claim to your property, and no idea you exist. They are a measuring stick, nothing more.

Why a good steward cares about this

At L. Jennings Law, we believe estate planning is about stewardship — taking what you’ve been entrusted with and protecting it for the people who come after you. The trusts we build don’t just pass money along; they shield it from creditors, lawsuits, divorces, and life’s hard turns, sometimes for generations.

The longer the law allows that protection to continue, the longer your stewardship continues. Naming the Rockefeller line is simply how we squeeze every allowable year out of the protection you worked so hard to put in place. It costs you nothing, and it quietly serves your family long after you’re gone.

So the next time you spot John D. Rockefeller’s name in your trust, you can smile. He’s not getting your money. He’s helping protect it.

Have questions about your own plan, or wondering whether your trust is built to go the distance? That’s exactly the kind of conversation we love to have. Reach out to L. Jennings Law — A Good Steward Firm.