Monday, 2 May 2011

Defining What Living Trusts Are

By Leandro T. Welander


A living trust first of all should not be confused with living wills. For those who are not familiar with the term yet, living trusts are forms of legal documents that are used to make sure that an individual's properties are divided and distributed as per the individual's wishes upon his or her death.

These kinds of documents usually also includes the person's last wish regarding the legal guardianship of any minor children that the individual has. In contrast, living wills are forms of legal documents which describes the kinds of medical treatment that you like to get, or not to get, in the event that you become incapacitated as a result of an illness or an injury. And by using a living trust, you can actually transfer ownership of all of your properties in a trust and then assign someone to be the trustee and administrate the said trust.

So there is no need for you to go around asking what is a living trust since the above description provides the basic applications of the document. You need to know though, that a well prepared and sufficiently funded living trust can help your family to avoid having to go through probate, since all of your assets technically, does not belong to you anymore because they are now owned by the trust you have set up.

Only the assets and items that are under your name will be subjected to undergo probate. To make sure that living trust you have is sufficiently "funded", you have to be sure that all of your assets have been correctly transferred from your name and into the trust that has been set up for it.

If the trust is not properly funded, it will be considered void and the state will take over and not only will exercise full control over the distribution of your properties and assets, but it will also decide on who should raise your minor aged kids.

As such, setting up these trusts correctly is very important. And due to the growing demand for more knowledge about how to properly set a living trust and will, there are a lot of scam products out there that are being sold to unwitting individuals that basically get nothing useful. The best thing that you can do if you like to set up appropriate wills and trusts is to set an appointment with a lawyer that specialize in these kinds of cases and ask for their professional assistance in setting up a trust or a will for you in order to protect your family in the event that something does happen to you.




About the Author:



No comments: