Benefits of a Living Trust in Massachusetts
Benefits of a Living Trust in Massachusetts
If you want to really know what your friends and family think of you die broke, and then see who shows up for the funeral.
- Gregory Nunn
You can make your own basic
Living Trust or create a living trust jointly with your spouse. There are many available types of living trust, though some are complicated and can only be used for certain circumstances.
Creating a Living Trust Online
- Bypass Living Trust: This can be used for married couples with a combined estate that can surpass the estate tax threshold.
- Special Need Living Trust: Leaving a property to someone with disability.
- Spendthrift living trust: The beneficiary is someone deemed unable to control his spending and who cannot be trusted to manage money. This living trust will control the beneficiary's ability to spend money.
The Essentials in Creating a Living Trust
You need to decide the following before you begin building your online living trust documents at 12Law.com:
List of your beneficiaries
List of back up beneficiaries
List of young beneficiaries that require guardianship and property management until they reach adulthood
First and second choice of successor trustee
- Use 12Law.com to create your online living trust document. It shouldn't take long to think through what you want in this important legal document
- Have your living trust document notarized. Sign your document in front of a notary public. Usually, banks offer free notary services
- Transfer property into your living trust. Depending on the type of property you are transferring to your living trust, the transfer may take a few weeks to take effect. All property with a title or deed needs to have the title or deed documents updated. This step is absolutely essential.
How to Change or Revoke Your Living Trust
Restating or revoking your living trust by adding or removing property is done by transferring your property ownership back to yourself, updating the list of living trust property attached to the trust document and also by revising the property titles.
Making a revocable living trust can fulfill your wish of giving your property to the beneficiaries of your choice. A living trust avoids any possibility of having the estate tied up in probate (a big advantage over a Last Will and Testament).
A living trust can spare your family from the expense and delay of a probate that is common when using a will. It can prevent probate from tying up your real estate and other miscellaneous assets. If you have money in a bank, brokerage, and other retirement accounts it would be effective to name "payable-on-death" beneficiaries for each account.
A living trust can ensure that what you bequeath remains confidential, except when it comes to real estate transfers that can be made public. Making a living trust is not much more complicated than making a will. The important thing to note, however, is to make sure that ownership of all the property you have indicated in the living trust document is legally transferred to the trust, with you as the trustee.
It may be a good idea to appoint another trustee for the living trust., in case you become incapacitated. He or she will take care of your financial affairs when you are incapable of doing it and will take over the management of the trust assets after you die. The absence of a living trust will make the court arrange someone to take over the affairs you left behind.
Individual or Shared Living Trusts for Couples
A Living Trust can be individual or shared. Couples can make a probate-avoiding trust together as a shared living trust. This is preferable especially if you have large, jointly held assets. Needing to divide up the jointly owned property is avoided. Shared living trusts can also be useful to bequeath property to a surviving spouse.
When one grantor dies, the property left to the surviving spouse stays in the living trust and does not need to be transferred. In the case of individual living trusts, the property left to the survivor has to be transferred from the living trust of the grantee to the survivors then to avoid probate, again placed in the survivor's living trust.
Individual trusts may make sense in certain circumstances:
Both of you have signed an agreement that each spouse's earning and other income are separate and each of you wants to keep your property separately
You are newly married with little or no property together
You owned property before marriage and don't want it comingled with assets you will acquire together during the marriage. You will be in sole control of your own trust property.
Community Property States. Decisions you make may be affected by the community property laws of your state. This law states that, as a general rule, spouses should share income acquired during marriage 50-50. Properties earned during the marriage are a community property regardless of the name in the title.
Non- Community Property States. The name stated in the title document is considered the owner of that property. If you acquire property together, consider a shared living trust. If you own separate property, then an individual living trust may be appropriate for one or both of you