Sunday, 1 May 2011

Knowing More About Living Trusts

By Leandro T. Welander


First of all, a living trust must not be confused with a living will. If you have not heard about such a thing yetliving trusts are forms of legal documents which are used to make sure that a person's properties are correctly distributed as per the wishes of the person when he or she dies. These types of documents typically includes a person's wishes about who to appoint as legal guardians of his or her minor children.

A living will, in contrast, is a legal document which specifies the type of medical treatment that you like to receive or not receive in case you fall seriously ill or become incapacitated because of an accident. Also, by setting up a living trust, you can easily transfer ownership of your assets in a trust and appoint someone to be your trustee and administrate the trust for you.

And that, in a nutshell, is the answer to the question: what is a living trust, which a lot of people seem to be asking these days. It is vital to understand though that setting up a well prepared and appropriately funded living trust can be quite helpful to your loved ones because there is no need for all of them to go through probate since you do not own your properties anymore, at least technically, as you have transferred all of them to the trust.

The assets that remain under your name however will be subjected to probate. To be certain that the living trust you set up is sufficiently "funded", you need to be sure that all your assets have been transferred into the trust. If this is not given enough attention, the trust will be void and the state will take over the administrative duties on all of your properties and decided on who gets to raise your kids.

In such cases, correctly setting up these trusts is indeed crucial. And because of the growing demand for knowledge regarding how you can correctly set a living trust and will, there are quite a number of scam DIY kits and companies these days that are selling products to unwitting individuals that basically get nothing useful from the articles and DIY kits on these trusts.

It will be best to simply consult with a lawyer who has experience doing and dealing with these matters so you can have the best advice.




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