Your lifestyle and personal preferences will dictate whether an irrevocable trust or a revocable trust is best suited to your specific needs. An irrevocable trust can maintain your wishes after you die, but will cost you some flexibility. What is an Irrevocable Trust? True to its name, an irrevocable trust is plain and simple: Irrevocable.…
PART 5 – It is legal and in some situations may be desirable to name more than one person as your successor trustee.
For example, you might name two or more of your children if you think one of them might feel hurt and left out if not named. …
PART 4 – I may not be comfortable with my children or friends serving as the successor trustee. For a large estate, another possibility is to name an institution as the successor trustee. PROS: An arguable benefit of utilizing a financial institution is being able to depend on its longevity and likely existence into the…
PART 3 – Due to their age, maturity, propensity for not getting along with siblings, you may want to consider an alternative. Under these circumstances, we recommend naming a disinterested third party who has no skin in the game. This would be someone who has no close personal relationships with any one child and will…
PART 2 – What are the pros and cons?
So, you’re creating or changing a revocable living trust and you are thinking about naming one of your children as the Successor Trustee. To recap, your Successor Trustee is the person who will step in to handle your trust assets …
PART 1 – Why is the selection of a Successor Trustee so important and what role will they play with regard to my trust? …
The coronavirus has caused a lot of uncertainty in all our lives. While not ideal, for many, this forced downtime at home has led to a time of reflection on the things that are really important. Many people have recently reached out to me to talk about their long neglected estate planning. If you have…
If you have heard of generation-skipping trusts (GSTs) at all, you probably think of them as a way for wealthy families to shield their fortune from estate taxes. That is true as far as it goes, but GSTs can also have benefits for the less well off by protecting assets from ex-spouses and creditors and…
As the name implies, a charitable remainder trust involves the transfer of assets to a trust with the income going to an individual or individuals (which can include the owner of the assets) and with a charity receiving the assets at the expiration of the trust period. Such a trust device benefits the individuals who…
The designation of an executor for a will is one of the critical steps in effective estate planning. The executor will be the individual responsible for the administration of the estate. He or she must execute the necessary documents to submit the will for probate. Then the executor must gather all of the testator’s (person…
As a general rule, the executor of an estate does not have personal liability for the debts and obligations of a decedent. Lest executors become complacent, however, they should be aware of an important exception to that rule, which was illustrated by a recent federal court case between executors and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).…
Most of us share the same objectives for our estate plan: 1) provide for our spouse or dependent children; 2) distribute our property; 3) plan for our disability; and 4) reduce our estate taxes. Unfortunately, most of us fail to put together a plan that achieves these goals. There are many approaches that can be…