Trust Roles Easily Explained: Grantor, Trustee, and Beneficiary
Trust Roles Explained Easily: Whether you're setting up a trust or are currently an interested party in a an existing trust, understanding who does what is essential.
Can You Break an Irrevocable Trust?
Irrevocable trusts are powerful tools for long-term care planning and asset protection, but what happens when you need to access those locked-away assets?
Our latest article, Can You Break an Irrevocable Trust?, dives deep into the options available if you find yourself in this situation. Learn about key topics like:
The strict limitations on accessing the trust principal
The grantor's rights to trust income
Pros and cons of adding a gifting provision to your trust
Revoking a trust – Full or partial
Changing the trust investment objective to generate more income for the grantor
Tax trap of realized gains within grantor irrevocable trusts
Whether you’re planning your estate, serving as a trustee, or navigating Medicaid rules, this comprehensive guide is packed with expert insights you shouldn’t miss.
Gifting Your House with a Life Estate vs. Medicaid Trust
I recently published an article called “Don’t Gift Your House To Your Children” which highlighted the pitfalls of gifting your house to your kids versus setting up a Medicaid Trust to own your house, as an asset protection strategy to manage the risk of a long-care care event taking place in the future. That article prompted a few estate attorneys to reach out to me to present a third option which involves gifting your house to your children with a life estate. While the life estate does solve some of the tax issues of gifting the house to your kids with no life estate, there are still issues that persist even with a life estate that can be solved by setting up a Medicaid trust to own your house.
Don’t Gift Your House To Your Children
A common financial mistake that I see people make when attempting to protect their house from a long-term care event is gifting their house to their children. While you may be successful at protecting the house from a Medicaid spend-down situation, you will also inadvertently be handing your children a huge tax liability after you pass away. A tax liability, that with proper planning, could be avoided entirely.
A CFP® Explains: Wills, Health Proxy, Power of Attorney, & Trusts
When we are constructing financial plans for clients, we inevitably get to the estate planning portion of the plan, and ask them “Do you have updated wills, a health proxy, and a power of attorney in place?
Should You Put Your House In A Trust?
When you say the word “trust” many people think that trusts are only used by the uber rich to protect their millions of dollars but that is very far from the truth. Yes, extremely wealthy families do use trusts to reduce the size of their estate but there are also a lot of very good reasons why it makes sense for an average individual or family to establish
