STEP Study Guide 2026
Everything you need to pass the STEP exam in one place: the exam format, every topic to study, real practice questions with explanations, flashcards, and full-length practice tests. Free, no sign-up needed.
📋 STEP Exam Format at a Glance
📚 STEP Topics to Study (23)
✍️ Sample STEP Questions & Answers
1. In a charitable remainder trust (CRT), what is the primary financial risk to the income beneficiary if the trust is underfunded?
If a CRT's assets decline and corpus is exhausted, the trust cannot continue making required annuity or unitrust payments to the income beneficiary.
2. For a special needs trust (SNT) to preserve a beneficiary's eligibility for Medicaid and SSI, which documentation requirement is most critical at creation?
A first-party SNT under 42 U.S.C. §1396p(d)(4)(A) must include a Medicaid payback provision upon the beneficiary's death and be for the sole benefit of the disabled individual to preserve benefits eligibility.
3. What is the fundamental duty of a fiduciary?
The fundamental duty of a fiduciary is to prioritize the interests of the beneficiary above all else, including their own. This means acting with utmost loyalty, good faith, and prudence in managing assets or making decisions on the beneficiary's behalf. Fiduciaries are held to a high legal and ethical standard to ensure the beneficiary's well-being and objectives are always paramount.
4. What is residual risk?
Residual risk is what remains after mitigation measures are applied, and it must be accepted, further reduced, or transferred based on organizational risk tolerance.
5. What is the primary planning advantage of a Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) compared to making direct charitable gifts each year?
A DAF allows a donor to make an irrevocable, deductible contribution in a high-income year and then advise the sponsoring organization on grants to charities over future years.
6. Under U.S. law, what is the maximum period for which a generation-skipping trust can hold assets before the rule against perpetuities terminates it in most traditional states?
The traditional common law rule against perpetuities limits trust duration to lives in being at creation plus 21 years, though many states have modified or abolished this rule.
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What Practice Test Geeks adds beyond an AI chat for STEP
An AI chatbot can quiz you, but it can't reproduce the exam conditions or keep your record. Here you get:
- A timed, full-length STEP mock exam — 100 questions in 180 minutes with a 65% pass mark, modeled on the official exam's question count and time limit, followed by a score report broken down by exam domain.
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- Progress saved on your device: completed tests, scores and missed questions stay in My Progress, so you can retake only what you got wrong.
- A printable STEP cheat sheet you can print or save as a PDF.
- STEP flashcards built from the same question bank.
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How this page was made: written with AI tools and published by Nathan Beja, founder of Practice Test Geeks, who is responsible for its content. Exam facts are checked against the official sources listed below. Not reviewed by a subject-matter expert. Editorial policy
Sources & references
Exam facts on this page (fees, format, dates, passing scores) are checked against these official sources; the date is our last check. Editorial policy
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