The Top Five Reasons our Clients Create Trusts

1. Our clients create Trusts to protect their minor and young children from bad people and bad decisions, in the event of an untimely death of their parents. A revocable trust can benefit your children, but not be considered their asset if they owe someone money – like their ex-spouse, their college, their business partner, or the bank that lent them money.

2. Our clients create Trusts to protect their spouse, and their children’s inheritance, from a big-spending second husband or wife. If you pass away long before your spouse, he or she may remarry. That person may not care as much as you do about providing for your children OR your spouse. A trust can ensure that your spouse and children have access to your money, but can’t give it to the wicked step-parent.

3. Our clients create Trusts to keep their affairs private. If a Will is your main estate-planning vehicle, the assets it controls, and whom those assets go to, will all be part of the public Probate Court records.

4. Our clients create Trusts to avoid the expense and delay of a Probate Court proceeding. Joint titling and TOD designations can help your assets avoid probate, but putting your child on your deed or your bank account makes them a co-owner, which means if they get divorced or declare bankruptcy, you could lose that asset. A Trust is a safer way to go. Watch this brief video for an overview.

5. Our clients create Trusts to keep their childrens’ inheritance from going to the Nursing Home. Most estate-planning trusts are “revocable” trusts, which you retain complete control over. But you may want to create an “irrevocable” trust, which you have to relinquish most control over- but the payoff is that if you do that at least five years before you or your spouse applies for Medicaid to pay for a nursing home, the assets in the trust will be off-limits to the State.

Do you have questions about trusts, wills, probate, or nursing home protection? Sign up for one of my seminars here.

Best Regards,