Paying insurance premiums to protect against potential losses frees us mentally to enjoy driving a car, leave our house empty while on vacation and receive medical treatment for an injury or illness. In the same way, the use of trusts acts like insurance and can shift anxiety to comfort, turmoil to peace, and complexity to understanding.
The Key Takeaways
What Are Risks Related to Estate Planning?
Proper estate planning can protect you against awful things that can happen to you, your family and your assets. These can include: a costly and public court guardianship/conservatorship if you or your spouse becomes incapacitated; being kept in a vegetative state; a potentially costly and time consuming probate process after you die; federal and state estate taxes; a will contest or heirs fighting over your assets; your surviving spouse not having enough money to live on; irresponsible spending by a beneficiary; an inheritance becoming part of a beneficiary’s divorce proceedings; an inheritance not making it to the intended beneficiary (i.e., left to an adult for the benefit of a minor); and an inheritance not being used according to your values and beliefs.
What You Need to Know: Not addressing these risks can cause you pain, worry, frustration, anxiety, fear and anguish. And, if any of these awful things should happen to you or a loved one, your quality of life can suffer.
Why Use Trusts for Your Broader Financial and Wealth Planning?
There are many different trusts that can be used to address a wide range of your circumstances, needs, anxieties, and aspirations. Take a simple but important example of trusts’ capabilities: the living trust. Most people want to avoid court interference at incapacity (i.e., disability) and at death, and a living trust solves this worry. When you establish a living trust, you transfer your assets to it and select someone to step in and manage them for you when you are not able to do so. Because the assets are no longer in your name, the court has no reason to get involved at either incapacity or death; your successor can manage your assets according to your instructions for as long as necessary.
More broadly, trusts can hold investments, property and insurance policies, with benefits of reducing various taxes and protecting your wealth from lawsuits and creditors. A trust can continue beyond your lifetime—assets can be kept in a trust until your beneficiaries reach the age(s) you want them to inherit, to provide for a loved one with special needs, or to protect an inheritance from beneficiaries’ creditors, spouses and future death taxes. A trust will also let you provide for your surviving spouse without disinheriting your children.
What You Need to Know: Trusts, in their various forms, offer you a robust package of dollar and quality-of-life benefits. And, trusts are fully compatible with your various investments and assets, from mutual funds to stocks (both public and private) to insurance policies to property.
Actions to Consider
For more information about this article, contact the Law Offices of Richard Sarner.