A Trust Can Protect Your Assets

Including a Living Trust in your overall estate plan can provide you with a number of advantages, one of those advantages being that it can offer some protection for your assets. For a trust to provide protection against creditors and divorce, it must be setup and funded by someone other than the beneficiary.

For example, if you create a Living Trust and make yourself the beneficiary, it would not protect you from creditors, but if your children are the beneficiaries, it could protect the assets for them. If you plan to leave your house to one of your children and you suspect that a spouse may try and take the house in a divorce, you would want to place it in a trust. By placing the house in a trust instead of leaving to your heir outright, a divorcing spouse would not gain access to it, and it would be preserved for your child and your grandchildren.

The reason that a Living Trust would protect the inheritance of your beneficiaries is because they will not actually own the assets, instead they would be owned by the trust for their benefit. A will would not provide the same type of protection for your child's inheritance. In addition to this, with a will, it would be necessary for your estate to go through probate; this can be expensive and can often take months or years. Assets in a trust do not need to go through probate because they are not part of your estate.

A Living Trust can sometimes be expensive to setup, and may not be right for ever estate plan. To decide if your estate plan would benefit from a Living Trust or if a will is sufficient, you will want to consult with an attorney that has experience in estate planning. An attorney can evaluate your specific circumstances and help you decide the type of estate plan that would work best for you and your family.

To learn more about trusts and protect you from the cost of long term care, please visit the website of the experienced estate planning attorneys Sarasota FL of the Co-Executor PLLC today.