Posts Tagged ‘ living trust ’

An Estate Plan Should Not Be a Set-It-and-Forget-It Endeavor

As we all know, life happens. There is really nothing we can do about it. However, some of the most common life events can have a dramatic effect on your estate plan. If you think your estate plan is like a slow cooker and you can set it and forget it, you and your loved ones may be in for a stomach-turning surprise when it is time to put your plan into action. Let us take a look at some common life changes and the impact they may have on your already established estate plan.

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No Contribution Is Too Small

 Most Americans strive to earn a decent-sized paycheck to support themselves and their families when they go to work. Stay-at-home parents, however, work to provide valuable nonfinancial contributions to their families everyday. They make sure that the home runs smoothly and that their family members have what they need to be successful and happy. If something were to happen to the stay-at-home parent, how would the family’s needs be met?

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Statements of Intent or Purpose in Estate Planning Documents

The reasons you, as a trustmaker, create a trust are certainly special and important to you, but your intent or purpose for creating a trust can also have significant legal ramifications. For this reason, it is often critical that a trustmaker express in writing their purpose for creating the trust. There are essentially two different ways of documenting a trustmaker’s intent—each have slightly different purposes, and sometimes both are generally called a “statement of intent.” Let us examine each of them.

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All Good Things Must Come to an End: Reasons a Trust Might Terminate

Nothing lasts forever. While trusts can stretch across generations and keep valuable money and property within a family, no trust has unlimited funds or an interminable time horizon. Every trust, at some point, will end. The reasons why a trust might terminate can vary, but in general, termination occurs because the trust has accomplished its purpose, is no longer economically feasible, has distributed all of its property, is revoked, or is dissolved by the court because of a dispute or an illegality.

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Trust Funding: Is Everything Titled Correctly?

Working with an attorney to draft a trust agreement for estate planning purposes is an important step. But just getting the document drafted and signed is not enough. For any trust to be effective, you must complete the process of funding your trust as soon as you can. But what exactly is funding?

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What Is a Separate Revocable Living Trust?

When a couple engages in foundational estate planning, one of the first questions addressed by estate planning attorneys is whether it makes sense for the couple to use a revocable living trust (RLT) as a part of their plan. If using an RLT makes sense, an important follow-up question to married couples should be whether it makes sense for them to use a joint RLT or separate RLTs.

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Can a Beneficiary Also Be a Trustee of a Trust?

Clients often naturally choose their children to be beneficiaries of their revocable living trusts. Many clients also wish to name one or more of their children as the trustee of ...

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Successor Trustee Compensation

Asking someone to serve as your fiduciary (trustee of your trust or personal representative or executor under your last will and testament) is not something that you should take lightly. Serving as a fiduciary is a heavy responsibility that requires significant time and effort. If you plan to nominate a family member or friend to serve in one or both of these roles, you will need to consider whether you should authorize them to be compensated from the trust or estate for the services they provide to the trust beneficiaries or heirs of the estate.

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Defining “Fair Market Value”: The Case of Wilburn v. Mangano

When reading through a will or trust agreement, you may see language that grants a right to an individual to purchase certain property from the estate or trust at “fair market value.” At first glance, this phrase may seem a perfectly reasonable method of setting a suitable purchase price for a property to be sold at a later date. But a recent court case out of Virginia teaches an important lesson to those who have a will or a trust that relies solely on the term “fair market value” to set a future price of property.

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Your Estate Plan and Your New Job

Starting a new job is an exciting new chapter in your life. Depending on your company’s onboarding process, there can be a lot of moving parts. You may feel overwhelmed by the introduction and review of the many different types of employee benefits. Not only are there forms to be filled out, they need to be filled out properly to ensure that your true financial and estate planning wishes are carried out.

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