• Mental or physical incapacity.

The living trust cater for periods in which you might be unable to handle your finances and health. When well documented, a living trust contain how you plan to take care of yourself and assets when you become mentally or physically disabled. This provision would ensure an out of the court settlement for how your assets and health should be handled while also saving you money incurred from a court supervised guardianship.

• Protecting minor beneficiaries.

For parent with minor kids, setting up a trust to hold assets and funds you would like to pass to your children is vital. It sometimes become problem when both parent of a child dies without provision for how their retirement account or life insurance should be treated. This means they didn’t name their children as the primary beneficiary of the accounts. To avoid court supervised guardianship, you should consider setting up a revocable living trust with the child named as the primary beneficiary of the retirement account.

• Owning assets in more than one state.

If you own assets in more than one state or have an estate different from where you reside, you strongly need to consider creating a living trust. Else, your estate might go through two probate process known as ancillary probate. Your family would be subjected to probate in the state you lived and also where the property is located.

• Privacy and secrecy.

Not everyone needs to know your estate plans. However, estate document such as a last will would call for probate in a probate court and much noise to the plans you made on your estate. Living trust does well to keep your plans just between the trustee, and the beneficiary. Only when the beneficiary feels dissatisfied about the content of the trust and goes to court would the document come to the eye of the public, else, it remains secret.

• Complicated relationship (marriage situations)

Living trust would be best for marriage situations in which you have more than one partner or in a second or third marriage. You and your current partner should make proper plans using trust so that each person asset can go to their respective beneficiaries without probate issues. Each partner at this stage would have had children and family from previous relations, this making it important to establish a living trust.

Trusts for married couples and singles

As an individual still without a relationship, you can make estate plans using the living trust. With your estate and assets solely in your name, your assets beneficiary would need to go through the hassles of probate. Also, you and your estate could be subjected to court supervised guardianship. Although, the each state has its minimum threshold for estate value not requiring probate for implementation. Once it exceeds the minimum, you could be in for some lengthy probate. Living trust is vital for singles.

Married couples with combined estate values exceeding the federal estate tax exemptions ($5 million) or the state estate tax exemption ($675,000) need to consider creating a living trust. This would help you and your spouse avoid heavy estate taxes in Fort Lauderdale. The use of living trust by couples prevent probate should in case one of the partner dies.

How living trust works.

One important to note when creating estate plan with the use of trust is funding the trust account. If you create a trust without funding it with the stated assets and accounts, you might be wasting your time. Also you need to follow-up and update your beneficiary designation the created trust. This shows the need for regular review and revision of created estate plans.

Contact a Fort Lauderdale Estate Planning Lawyer

Our estate lawyer are the best candidate to represent you in the establishment of your estate. If you reside in Fort Lauderdale and you need help regarding the planning of your estate, and also a personal representative, contact our estate planning lawyer in Fort Lauderdale.

Estate planning can be a tough task, depending on how you want your estate to be planned. Ever more complicated is planning it all by yourself. To ensure that your estate is well planned, it is best you contact a professional, one who is quite conversant with estate planning and the estate planning laws in Fort Lauderdale.