Web Link: The (Only) 3 Reasons You Should Have an Irrevocable Trust
Downloadable PDF: The (Only) 3 Reasons You Should Have an Irrevocable Trust
Category: Trusts
You Don’t Really Want an Asset Protection Trust
I get a lot of calls from people asking if I can set up an Asset Protection Trust for them. These people usually owe taxes or child support, are contemplating divorce, have recently been the responsible party in an accident or injury to someone else, or anticipate their risky business practices will lead to lawsuits in the future. Despite what they may think, most people in these situations do not want their property owned by an Asset Protection Trust. Asset Protection Trusts are permitted and created in a handful of states (currently 16) such as Delaware, Nevada, Ohio, Alaska and Rhode Island. Trusts created in other states do not have the same level of protection. The idea is that you
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Don’t Piss Off Your Trustee
A colleague of mine contacted me about a legal issue she was dealing with. Her client had created an irrevocable trust for tax minimization purposes, named his brother (a US citizen) and his sister-in-law (a Canadian citizen) as Co-Trustees, signed the Trust and transferred a life insurance policy to the Trust. For some reason, in the brief period between signing the trust and mailing it to the Co-Trustees, the client succeeded in royally pissing off his brother to the point of being told he would rather eat cold rice (in actuality, he was told something far less palatable) than serve as his trustee. Just to add to this problem, the client had already applied for a Tax ID Number for
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A Legal Magic Trick: Revoking Irrevocable Trusts
The world changes, and so does our family, friends and charitable organizations. And we do too: We start to care more about relationships than money, health instead of inebriation, and sometimes come to an understanding with those people we disagree with. However, estate planning benefits do not always lend themselves to changed circumstances, so if you want creditor protection, government benefits, estate tax savings or the ability to control your family’s inheritance “from the grave” you usually need an irrevocable trust, I.e. one you cannot change even if you desperately need to change the documents. When you create certain irrevocable trusts, you cannot modify them. These trusts are (typically) either the trustee or the beneficiary but never both; you may
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Why Jeffrey Epstein’s Trust Only Adds to the Murder Conspiracy
While America’s criminal justice system does not judge people to be guilty until proven guilty (even though it has no compunction with adjudicating innocent people as being guilty), Jeffrey Epstein sure does look like a bad, bad dude. The “Pimp of the Rich and Famous” would have been charged with human trafficking, statutory rape, prostitution, and likely many more demented crimes which thinking of would cause most decent people to throw up in their mouth a little bit. His trial and any plea bargain could have been an enormous bombshell that would have ruined at least a few people with HUGE shoes to fill. It was in this context that Jeffrey Epstein somehow hung himself from a five-foot high bunkbed
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Damian Hurley: Why Minimizing Estate Taxes is Not Always a Good Thing
For decades estate attorneys have been driven by a prime directive, a primary motivating cause that overcomes all other client desires: Minimizing estate taxes. I believe this is a huge mistake, and a recent court decision highlighted by a stern millionaire patriarch, celebrities, a free-living playboy, and an irrevocable trust shows us why. Today it takes a decent amount of money ($11.4 million or more) to face a federal estate tax when you die, and there are also certain irrevocable trusts, including GRATs and GRUTs, that further minimize or eliminate estate taxes. So, for many of us this article is not relevant, but for those who it is, it should come as no surprise that estate attorneys have traditionally focused
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How to Secretly (and Correctly) Purchase Real Estate with Trusts and LLCs
Privacy is an almost-forgotten concept in our world. Perhaps we are trying to avoid being found by a greedy family member or being served in a vexatious lawsuit by a degenerate loser. Maybe you are a celebrity or media personality and don’t want your fans – or detractors – waiting outside your building or driveway (I love all of my adoring fans, but I don’t want them knocking on my front door before I start binging Punky Brewster reruns on Netflix). Maybe you are a foreign diplomat trying to secretly create a safe haven for your money and yourself in our wonderful country in case you piss off the head of your political party. But real estate records are public
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Codicils and Trust Amendments May Burn Your Estate
Hiring an attorney has been obnoxiously expensive since the first time a guy’s donkey backing into another guy’s mud version of today’s tiny houses: You tend to want a person or document that best insures you are going to get things done your way, but good results cost a lot of money. So, it is not surprising that people prefer to change their Wills using Codicils and Trust Amendments instead of redrafting the entire original document. I have concluded this is often a mistake and now believe clients should spring for the costs of redrafting their entire document. Codicils are quick changes to existing Wills, and only modify the portions they are intended to change (and maintain the remaining contents
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Jerry Seinfeld Should Have Left His Royalties to a Trust
I have worked with some former authors and musicians who receive some form of royalties and “trailing income” from their past artistic works. Whether that occasional student of mid-20th Century Literature purchases a book from 1964 for his thesis, or CBS FM decides to play a song from 1982 (yes, the “Oldies” radio stations are now playing the songs you made out to in the backseat of your mom’s Dodge Minivan), someone somewhere is receiving a royalty payment. Copyrights, patents and trademarks tend to have long royalty periods (patents tend to vary the most), which you may think is good. However, the problem is that certain forms of intellectual property, such as copyrights, can continue for long after your passing,
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8 Steps to Transfer Your Coop to a Revocable Trust
Coops are a pain in the neck to transfer, especially if you pass away and your Coop is being transferred by your Will: The Coop does not like accepting payments from non-tenants (because they don’t want to create an excuse for undesired tenancy outside of the proprietary lease and interview process), so months of unpaid fees and late charges begin to stack up waiting for the Surrogate’s Court to admit the deceased-owners Will to Probate. So, it should come as no surprise that someone thought “Hey, if I can transfer my Coop shares using a Revocable Trust, I can save a lot of time and family frustration.” And they were correct: If your Coop is owned by your Revocable Trust,
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