A Lifetime Trust is an Irrevocable Trust that will pay out an inheritance to a beneficiary for the duration of his or her life. Creating individual Lifetime Trusts for your family provides a wealth of benefits.
If your children are currently minors, a Trust is a good alternative to having your child’s inheritance endure a court-supervised guardianship. Individual trusts also allows you to give your children an even split of your estate.
Many trusts end when a child reaches adulthood or a specified age such as 25 or 30. If you create a Trust that ends as some point in your child’s life, those funds will loose asset protection and may be taken for a court settlement. A Lifetime Trust offers the benefit of continued asset protect. Asset protection can keep your child’s inheritance safe from his or her creditors or a divorcing spouse.
If your beneficiaries have already reached adulthood, a lifetime Trust is still a good idea. Besides providing continued asset protection from creditors it also provides protection when an heir who is not good with money and may spend his or her inheritance too quickly. Such a Trust will also protect your child from losing all or part of his inheritance in a divorce.
Like other Irrevocable Trusts, a Lifetime Trust can pass to your heir outside of probate and without being included in your taxable estate. For estates worth more than a million dollars, estate tax reduction methods are a must. By creating trusts for each heir you will guarantee your loved ones an inheritance that will not be washed away by estate taxes.
By avoiding probate, you may save your family some of the time and cost associated with this harried process.
There are many advantages to having a Lifetime Trust. If you would like to learn more or would to set up a Lifetime Trust, schedule a visit with the living trust lawyers at Anderson, Dorn & Rader.
