Summary: The end of the calendar year (and the beginning of the following year) can be a great time to review many things related to your estate and financial plans. In addition to reviewing life-event changes, and their impact on your plan, this time is also an excellent opportunity to review your assets and ensure that all of the assets that should be transferred into your living trust are, in fact, funded. Whether they are existing or newly-purchased assets, now is always a good time to make certain that your trust is properly equipped to do the job you created it to do.
Revocable living trusts have the
potential to be extremely useful and helpful tools serving a vital role in a
complete estate plan. A living trust is a lot like a car. A car can do amazing
things if it is properly prepared to operate and maintained. If you do not fill
a vehicle with gasoline, oil, brake fluid or engine coolant, it doesn’t matter
how amazing your car is – it won’t run. If you don’t keep your car maintained,
it may run perfectly at first but will eventually reach a point where it stops
running right or maybe even malfunctions completely.
Your trust must be similarly prepared to
do its job. While your car needs gasoline in it, your trust needs assets inside
it to do its job. To maximize the benefits of your trust, both in terms of protecting
your privacy along with avoiding delays and legal/court costs, you have to
minimize the assets that go through probate. This means accomplishing all the
tasks you need to do to transfer (or “fund”) your wealth into your trust. Your
trust’s distribution instructions can only govern assets that you’ve properly
transferred to the trust’s control. Your trust’s probate-avoidance advantages
only apply if the trust legally owns your assets so that the assets can remain
outside your probate estate.
Do not misunderstand – you do not need to
fund ALL of your assets into your trust. Indeed, there are certain assets for
which it might be disadvantageous to fund them into your trust. Retirement
accounts like 401k accounts and IRAs are an example. For these assets, of
course, there are other ways to ensure they avoid probate as they have their
own death beneficiary designations attached to them. For most assets, though,
if your plan includes a living trust, that will be the vehicle you’ll use for
avoiding probate and protecting your privacy.
Given what an important task this is, it
is important to make sure you’ve done it right and that it remains up to date.
This is yet another reason to engage in routine estate planning “check-ups.”
While your annual year-end plan review can allow you to assess what life event
changes have occurred in your life recently (and what type of estate plan
changes might be needed due to them,) it is also a great time to assess your
assets and your trust funding. Have you bought any new assets this year? If so,
have you completed the necessary steps to ensure that those assets are now
transferred to the trust?
Have you sold anything? If yes, have you
analyzed what affect this might have on your trust distributions? Perhaps you
sold your Florida beachfront condo for cash. If your trust says that your condo
went to your daughter, but also says that all cash accounts are to be split
equally between your three children, then this sale has changed the nature of
your distributions (your daughter saw a reduction in her inheritance as a
result of the sale.) If that wasn’t a goal of yours, you may want to consider
making a matching change to your distribution scheme.
This article is published by the Legacy Assurance Plan and is intended for general informational purposes only. Some information may not apply to your situation. It does not, nor is it intended, to constitute legal advice. You should consult with an attorney regarding any specific questions about probate, living probate or other estate planning matters. Legacy Assurance Plan is an estate planning services-company and is not a lawyer or law firm and is not engaged in the practice of law. For more information about this and other estate planning matters visit our website at www.legacyassuranceplan.com.
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