Designed to provide more privacy and legal protection than wills do, that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ins, outs, and advantages of living trusts. Understanding what this document is and how it works can help you determine if it’s the right option for you. Learn the basics.
What is a bypass trust, and do you need one? Estate planning can take many forms, but at the end of the day, most estate plans boil down to the same purpose: maximizing the sentimental and financial value of your legacy to those you care about the most. A bypass trust is one among a …
Testamentary Trust vs Living Trust An estate constitutes the total financial value of a person’s belongings at the time of their death – including their real estate, personal property, investments, financial instruments, and sentimental possessions. When you die, all of these things must go on to be distributed among the living. The probate process is …
Ring fencing has nothing to do with jewelry, but everything to do with protecting the assets that are most important to you – or mitigating risk in a volatile business. Ring fencing describes the act of separating, isolating, and insulating select assets or business dealings through some form of legal arrangement. There are no formal …
Every year on Tax Day, millions of Americans prepare to send in their final tax returns, awaiting refunds or fearing debt. Yet not every individual income tax return pertains to a person. Trust agreements, too, must pay taxes – and many types of trusts must file their own tax returns. Understanding how trust taxation works …
Over a hundred years ago, an appeals court in New York established that a person could create an account and name a beneficiary on it to receive the money held in the account upon the account holder’s death as an entirely revocable form of estate planning. This arrangement was tentatively named a Totten trust and …
Do you want to give your home to your children without including its value in your estate for state and federal tax purposes? Do you want to be able to gift property to your heirs while still retaining the ability to live in it and hold an ownership interest for a set amount of years? …
Trusts are excellent vehicles for managing and moving wealth between individuals, both in life and death. But setting up a trust is not quite as simple as drafting and notarizing a will. Continue reading for an in-depth analysis of a joint trust vs. separate trust. There are several moving parts, agreements, and conditions to consider …
Trusts and estate plans can get incredibly complicated, so let us break the AB living trust down into its most basic moving parts. AB living trusts are a two-part trust process involving the creation of an A trust (the marital trust) and a B trust (the bypass trust). Both trusts ensure that the wealth accrued …
When a person dies, their belongings distribute among the living. There is very little we can take with us into the afterlife – and most of what counts as a personal possession, especially property, must pass into another person’s ownership. Probate laws determine this. Probate refers to the judicial process of administering a decedent’s estate, …
A trust’s creation, management, and resolution can be very complicated in the trust administration process. Whether you intend to be the future decedent and would like to create a trust to manage certain assets within your estate before and after your death, or whether you have been named as the successor trustee for a loved …