BB&T v. Hamilton Greens: The Offshore Trust Case Nobody Cites
A debtor funded a Cook Islands trust mid-litigation, then lost a $4.9M judgment. The creditor moved for contempt and the court said no. Here is why.
Every compilation of "failed offshore trust" cases includes Anderson, Lawrence, and Solow. None of them includes this one, and the omission is telling.
In BB&T v. Hamilton Greens - usually called the Bellinger case - a creditor asked a federal court to hold a debtor in contempt for failing to pay a $4.9 million judgment after moving his assets into a Cook Islands trust. The court held a hearing and denied the motion.
What Happened
Branch Banking & Trust Co. made a loan of $3,375,000, personally guaranteed by Richard Bellinger and two others. The loan went bad and BB&T sued.
On November 30, 2011 - almost seven months into the action - Bellinger created an offshore trust in the Cook Islands and funded it with $1.7 million of his assets. Summary judgment was heard on January 3, 2012, and the court entered judgment against him for $4.9 million.
Bellinger did not pay. BB&T filed a straightforward motion to show cause, stating that he had failed to satisfy the judgment because he had transferred all of his assets to the Cook Islands trust.
The court held a hearing. It credited Bellinger's testimony that he had no ability to obtain the assets from the trust, and it denied the motion to show cause.
Why This Case Matters
Set Bellinger beside the cases that anchor every failure list and the pattern resolves.
In FTC v. Affordable Media, the Andersons were the protectors of their own trust, holding the power to force the foreign trustee to repatriate. They had drawn more than $1 million out of it previously. They went to jail.
In In re Lawrence, the settlor kept the sole power to appoint trustees and to add or exclude beneficiaries. He was jailed and fined $10,000 per day.
In Bellinger, the court looked for the same thing and did not find it. He could not compel his trustee, and the creditor put on no evidence that he could. The motion failed.
That is the same civil contempt test producing opposite outcomes on different facts - which is exactly what you would expect if the test is about control rather than about offshore trusts. Contempt is a lever applied to a person. A lever needs something to grab.
What This Case Does Not Say
We are not going to overclaim it, because the facts do not support overclaiming.
It does not bless late funding. Bellinger funded the trust seven months into active litigation against him. That is bad timing by any standard, and it leaves a transfer exposed to fraudulent-transfer law entirely apart from any contempt question. Surviving a show-cause motion is not the same as surviving an avoidance action.
It is not binding on anyone. A district court adopting a magistrate judge's report is persuasive at best. Someone citing this as settled law would be making the same mistake we criticize in the other direction.
It is a small evidentiary data point, not a doctrine. One hearing, one judge, one record.
What it does do is falsify the strong claim. If offshore trusts inevitably produce contempt - if the impossibility defense is dead, as critics have argued since Anderson - then this proceeding should have ended in a contempt finding too. It did not.
Why You Have Not Heard of It
Compilations of "failed" offshore trust cases are assembled by searching for adverse outcomes. A case where the creditor's motion was denied does not surface in that search, and would not serve the compiler's purpose if it did.
That is not an accusation of dishonesty; it is how selection works. But it is why a list of losses is not a description of the field. Litigation is a selected sample to begin with - the reported decisions are the fights, never the structures that quietly do their job and never generate an opinion. When even the fights include denials that go unmentioned, the picture skews further.
We reviewed all of them, wins included, in our full case-by-case review and our review of offshore trust case law.
What a Planner Takes From It
- Genuine inability is a real defense, and courts do credit it when the record supports it.
- The creditor bears the burden of showing control. In this case they did not carry it.
- None of that rescues bad timing. Fund before a claim exists, not seven months into a lawsuit.
- Ask what a court would find if it went looking for your powers. That question, not the trust's brochure, decides these cases.
Frequently asked
Frequently asked questions
Branch Banking & Trust had made a $3,375,000 loan personally guaranteed by Richard Bellinger and two others. In November 2011, roughly seven months into the litigation, Bellinger created a Cook Islands trust and funded it with $1.7 million. The court entered a $4.9 million judgment against him in January 2012. When he did not pay, BB&T moved for an order to show cause why he should not be held in contempt.
No. The court held a hearing, credited his testimony that he had no ability to get the assets out of the trust, and denied the motion to show cause. It is one of the few reported offshore trust contempt proceedings that ended without a contempt finding.
Because the record showed no retained control. In Anderson the settlors were the trust's protectors with power to force repatriation; in Lawrence the settlor kept trustee-appointment and beneficiary powers. Bellinger could not compel his trustee, and the creditor offered no evidence that he could. Same legal mechanism, opposite result, because the control was not there.
No. Bellinger funded the trust roughly seven months into an active lawsuit, which is exactly the timing that exposes a transfer to fraudulent-transfer attack. He survived a contempt motion, which is a different question from whether the transfer itself could be unwound. Nothing here recommends late funding.
Limited. It is a federal district court ruling adopting a magistrate judge's report, not an appellate decision. It binds no one. Its value is evidentiary: it shows what happens when a court runs the same impossibility analysis and finds genuine inability rather than manufactured inability.