Wills and Living Wills Article
Revocable Living Trust
A trust is a contract between yourself as the Trustmaker/Grantor/Settlor/Trustor and yourself (typically) as Trustee (the person that manages the trust). You can change or revoke the trust at any time that you have capacity.
You can specify who determines your disability. You can set out the terms of the trust to handle distribution while you are alive and well, alive and disabled, and not alive. The trust handles both disability and providing for your beneficiaries. You can set the terms for how and when your beneficiaries receive assets from the trust. If the beneficiary has disabilities, a special needs trust may be appropriate.
You may want assets held in trust for a minor beneficiary. If a beneficiary is going through bankruptcy or has creditor issues, you may want to draft the trust so that the beneficiary cannot demand the money from the Trustee. Sometimes trusts are set up to provide protection in event of divorce (if the beneficiary receives the money outright and then commingles it with spouse, it can be hard to trace what is left, if anything, if the inheritance and amounts not traceable are included in what is divided in the divorce).
Consult an estate planning attorney to review your goals/wishes and the various options in this area.
Make sure you properly fund your trust after signing it and review all beneficiary designations to make sure they meet your wishes. It will be frustrating for your Trustee to not only have to do the trust administration but also the probate because you “forgot” to change title on an asset into your trust.
Comments:
QUESTIONS
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Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I have 2 siblings and a step sibling who are sole beneficiaries of a trust. My step dad passed almost a year ago. We have heard nothing about the status of the trust. All of his personal property has been sold and presumably those funds have been added to the trust. None of us are contesting the distribution of funds. How long should it generally take for us to hear when we may receive our inheritance and how can I follow up on the courts progress? Kindly, Sharon D.
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I want to change the executor on my revocable trust. I want the new executor to inherit some property and money. My question is: can an executor inherit? Thank you for your attention to this.
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What steps must be taken to obtain a Judicial Determination of Heirs in Arizona?
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My father recently died ( he was 92 yrs) He lived in Iowa and was in a Nursing home.He was a US Veteran, I was the rep Payee for his checking account, his only daughter, and his VA fiduary, only one to make his funeral arrangements and pay the mortuary. He had no will, do I need to file formal estate paperwork and all other documents since I am his heir ? I do not have the money to file.
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How do I begin to file probate if there is no will?
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Do you have to file your power of attorney paperwork with the county recorder for it to be legal and final.
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My brother is the Trustee of our deceased Mother's estate. I have asked him on several occasions to give me copies of various documents and he has failed to do so. I have very little information regarding the Trust or the financial distributions. How can I get copies of those documents? He has since sold the house that our mother left to both of us but I have seen no money from that sale. He still refuses to give me any information. What can I do?
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I am on a fixed income. we need to setup a will or trust. My wife is older than I and we want to have our wishes setup in legal order for our benefactors. We have grown children from previous marriages. Since AZ is a survivor right state, God forbid, if something were to happen to us both, we want legal docs in place for the kids to be governed by. How can we proceed in setting this legal process in motion?
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Should a will include property with defined beneficiaries such as a trust or a POD account in a bank? Is it a bad idea to include such property?
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Is a copy of my trust legal. I lost the original.
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