Can A Trust Protect My Assets from Creditors, Lawsuits, Or Long Term Care Costs?
Video Summary
Can a trust protect my assets from creditors, lawsuits long-term care costs? The answer is no. A revocable trust does not protect your assets from any of those, and that you look through the trust to see who controls the asset and who the beneficiary is, and so that it is a myth that many people have that they think if they transfer their assets into a trust that is protected from the claims accreditors. Also, as far as applying for Medicaid, if you need to have long-term care, again, the assets in the trust and the income is considered yours and you have to apply for it. Even the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t require you to get a separate federal identification number if you’re the trustee of your trust. Now, if you set up an irrevocable trust, then that’s a different story. Then it will protect your assets. However you lose control, you can have any control over your assets, and so there’s still a five-year lookback period for if you go into skilled nursing care, but I don’t drive irrevocable trust and that I don’t like the idea you’re giving up control of your assets and what happens to them. If you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Trusts, Videos
How Can I Make Sure My Beneficiaries Receive Their Inheritance Quickly and Smoothly?
Video Summary
How can I make sure my beneficiaries receive their inheritance quickly and smoothly? My suggestion is, particularly if you have a fairly simple estate, it’s how you title your assets with your bank accounts. You can put have it in your name, payable on death, and that’s a POD account and name your beneficiary. So, all they need is your death certificate and they can receive the Aspen. If you have a brokerage account with Merrill Lynch or Raymond James or Schwab or anyone else, you can put a transfer on death, A TOD designation, and that way the assets will pass to your beneficiaries by them presenting your death certificate and they’ll transfer it into your name, into the beneficiary’s name. If you own real estate and you want it to go to your beneficiaries, you can execute what they call a lady bird deed or enhanced life estate deed, which says that I convey the property to these beneficiaries. However, reserve all the rights of ownership during my lifetime, including the right to sell the property, keep all the proceeds, and you can even change who you wish to receive the property at the time of your death. So those are the ways that you can have these assets pass smoothly and without any lawyer interference as far as that’s concerned, or court interference. And so if you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Trusts, Videos, Wills
Should I Name a Corporate Trustee Like A Bank or Trust Company or an Individual Trustee?
Video Summary
Should I name a corporate trustee, like a bank or trust company or an individual trustee? Well, I believe that corporate trustees or trust companies are very well suited to handle large trust where there’s a lot of assets and it’s a continuing trust, meaning that the trustee is directed to hold the asset, invest it, and give the income or make distributions over a period of time to the beneficiary, such as hold the money until the beneficiary reach his age 35 and only give them income. They need to make investment choices, and they would do a very good job of as far as investing. One of the factors involved with the corporate trustee is their fee schedule and that you might want to check to see what their minimums are and what size of trust they usually like to handle, and that usually they have certain minimums as what it would cost them to handle it. On the other hand, if you have an individual which you trust, or one of your children or a relative who you believe could handle this and you have make provision for your assets to be distributed outright, then an individual may work out just fine and that they can simply marshal the assets or inventory them and then either sell them or turn around and distribute them in kind to the beneficiaries. And so, it’s not that complicated. Sometimes you want to name an individual, particularly if you have a minor or someone, a special needs person, and you want the human element of them to be able to make decisions as if the child or the beneficiary was theirs. So those are some of the factors to look at as far as individual versus corporate trustees. And usually, an individual does not charge the same rate as what a corporate trustee would. My phone number is (727) 847-2288If you have any questions
- Published in LLC's and Corporations, Trusts, Videos
How Can I Minimize the Chances of My Will Being Contested After My Death?
Video Summary
How can I minimize the chances of my will being contested after my death? Well, the first thing that you should do is to have an attorney prepare the will and have him be the witness, and that anytime that there’s a will challenge, he would be the best witness to testify. As far as your competency, the basis for setting aside your will is that you did not have the mental capacity to make a will, so certainly the lawyer would make that determination. The other one is undue influence. So if you want to leave most of your estate to one of your children and exclude some of the other or make a disproportionate share, then there’s a couple of things that you need to try and do if possible, and that there’s a presumption of undue influence. If the person who that you’re leaving these disproportionate share or all of your estate to them, whether it be a child or anyone else is, did they select the attorney that they take you to the attorney’s office? Were they present whenever you made out the will? Did they know what you put in the will after you have the will? Were they present whenever you signed the will? Did they know the contents of the will? And also as far as paying for it? So,if some of these factors are present, it presents a undue influence. So, if possible, not to have the person select the lawyer or take you to the appointment or know what’s in the will, I realize many times that’s not possible and that you’re dependent on the caregiver or child who’s taking care of you to bring you to the appointment. And so I have over the years tried to do this as tactfully as possible, as tell the person that you’re going to be living and that’s brought you there as they need to excuse themselves, wait in the waiting room, and I make a notation in my notes that I’ve excused them. And then discuss who you want to receive your estate and why you want to do that. In order to try and overcome these problems. In the event there is a will challenge after you’re gone. Also, you need to put in the will. If you’re leaving someone out, a child out, you need to just put in there expressly, make no provision for a particular child to show that you did not forget them. The old thing is leaving my dollar is a terrible idea and that you tasked the lawyer with having to, or the executor, trying to get them to receive for a dollar, particularly if they don’t like the provisions of the will. So just put in there that you didn’t forget about ’em. You expressly make no provision for them. If you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
How Often Should My Trust Be Reviewed and Updated?
Video Summary
How often should my Trust be reviewed and updated? You should have it reviewed periodically to see if there’s any change in circumstances such as one of your beneficiaries passing away or if you provide for grandchildren whether you’ve had any additional grandchildren. If there’s been any change in circumstances as far as your child, as far as being disassociated with you or estranged or if you provide for stepchildren or whether or not you continue to wish to provide for them. So, there’s any number of reasons why you want it reviewed if there’s a change in circumstance. Another one is in the event the law changes, particularly as far as the taxes are concerned. For many years it was a lower amount, and so if your assets had several million dollars, well then you would need to have do the estate planning for tax purposes. They’ve raised the estate tax limitation now to $14 million or thereabouts, and so therefore, it is not important to worry about planning for estate taxes since there should be none. So, if you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.