Advice on will vs. trust (federal, inherit, 2013, states)
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My trust does not handle my incapacity (it is written so it could if all else failed) but this should be done with a power of attorney. Seems like you will have a problem finding a person to act as your "attorney" so maybe you can see if corporate trustees will handle the POA. Some Attornies will also do this.
If you go with a trust and put your home in it be sure you do not lose any current state benefits. If the trust is going to be in the same state as your attorney you should not have a problem.
Your attorney could be correct in that the trust is the best way to sold no one to act as and executor. I would ask the other Attornies and call a few trust companies to see if they would do the POA.
Ask the attorney for suggestions on who should be the trustee co and POA. This might help. Identify this person first. Before you finalize the trust have the new trustee review. They probably have language they want to protect themselves.
Did the attorney discuss income taxes on the trust? Is the trust revocable or irrevocable when formed? At first death does it change? (You do not want the trust to be subject to a separate income tax when set up.)
Do not remember did you include a health directive or living will in the documents you mentioned? You need this for medical care. It would probably be your spouse and then someone else as backup. Also your doctors can be a backup.
Thank you for the insightful questions. I am afraid we did not ask a lot of them (partly as we did not know this domain well) - hence the thread...
The meeting was set up in response to inquiry on a package of Will, Financial Power of Attorney, Medical Advance Health Directive for the two of us. In discussing that the lawyer advised us of the will versus trust equation and pluses and minuses around that. It can be called a upsell but, to be fair, the lawyer did not push us for one decision or the other. Since we did not go into it thinking trust, we did not have the questions ready.
It was not directly mentioned but I understood that we were discussing a revocable trust. We did not think to ask the tax question, though that is clearly very important. We did not know to ask the question about state tax implications of moving our condo into the trust. For now, we and the property (and the lawyer) are based in the same state.
The attorney did advise us generally on the executor question. She said that big banks are perhaps not the best options and that there are smaller and more specialized firms in the city that are small enough to develop a relationship with and big enough to be able to handle it over the coming decades.
The conversation includes a financial POA (I assume that becomes less critical with a trust) and a advanced medical directive.
For now, I am leaning towards sticking with a will. I realize this likely means that the amount we spend on it ($750) is likely wasted if and when we do a trust. But on the positive side, we are not necessarily ready with who (aside from each other) to nominate as our trustee if incapacitated, etc. These things being far away, it seems that $750 is not a huge amount to waste if it came to that (we wanted a trust after all).
Really??? My wife charged $500 for a will and $1500-$1800 for a trust.
Will just spells out who gets what. Then you have probate, attorney fees, court hearings.
A trust avoids probate fees (which considering the size of your estate) could be sizable and speeds the distribution process. Do your heirs a favor, go with a trust
5 mil estate. Probably a lot of details. Our trust was about 2300. It isn’t cheap.
I would always do a trust over a will. Make sure that you order enough death certificates because a lot of places want originals not copies. Main thing is a trust avoids probate. Make sure you have detailed info on beneficiaries because otherwise the money spent to find them will come from the trust.
If you have no relatives her there are forms who will execute wills. They usually charge a percentage of the trust value. If you have a person do it make their payment a gift NOT a payment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonesg
Lawyers clean up on the backs of the unknowing.
They love to say "I'll be at the courthouse tomorrow, I can file that for you if you want".
And "feel free to call if you have any questions."
Then the client gets the bill and they were billed for everything they thought the lawyer was offering gratis.
Why would you expect a person you hire to do work for free?
Last edited by Electrician4you; 04-21-2020 at 07:14 AM..
Your trust may not move to a new state without checking what the new states laws are.
We have trusts, wills, POA, health directives done in FL 6 years ago.
We just moved to NC and our FL trust atty said she could not update our trust and to find an atty in NC. That's something I didn't know
Our trust is still valid in NC is my understanding but only as it now stands, no changes.
The reason wills are fairly cheap to create is attorney expects to get call to act as will's executor at death and that's where they make their money. Trusts charge their money up front.
If a couple has no children the simplest thing to do is always (always, always) make sure your financial accounts (banks, brokerages, home title) have spouse designated as joint owner or beneficiary. The surviving spouse inherits with no probate, as beneficiary they send death certificate, as joint owner probably the same (may differ state to state).
Why spend thousands to set up a trust? In our case (no kids) I want my family to get some money at my spouses death if I die first. There is no other way to do this except by trust, even then may not happen due to circumstances.
Widows/widowers remarry and a future spouse stands to inherit everything (nothing for my nieces/nephews or siblings) without a trust. I think a future spouse should inherit something but not everything. This pandemic makes us think about mortality being closer than we thought. We are healthy but so were many who died.
edit to add: I think it is very important to tell your heirs about your trust, perhaps send them a copy of it. If they don't know they are named in the trust and what entity to contact (bank/brokerage) they will only know what is in the will (that is public access). In my case my heirs may be waiting several years to receive trust money (after death of surviving spouse). This way at least one of my heirs might be aware they are due an inheritance and speak up. My grandmother told us exactly what was in her will and who her local attorney was, her main asset was her home. If we didn't know what was in her will the house would've been sold ASAP, not what she specified but if we didn't know we would've been in the dark. Most people don't know enough to request a copy of will from courthouse, I didn't know this was possible until much later.
Last edited by twinkletwinkle22; 04-21-2020 at 09:57 AM..
Your trust may not move to a new state without checking what the new states laws are.
We have trusts, wills, POA, health directives done in FL 6 years ago.
We just moved to NC and our FL trust atty said she could not update our trust and to find an atty in NC. That's something I didn't know
Our trust is still valid in NC is my understanding but only as it now stands, no changes.
The reason wills are fairly cheap to create is attorney expects to get call to act as will's executor at death and that's where they make their money. Trusts charge their money up front.
If a couple has no children the simplest thing to do is always (always, always) make sure your financial accounts (banks, brokerages, home title) have spouse designated as joint owner or beneficiary. The surviving spouse inherits with no probate, as beneficiary they send death certificate, as joint owner probably the same (may differ state to state).
Why spend thousands to set up a trust? In our case (no kids) I want my family to get some money at my spouses death if I die first. There is no other way to do this except by trust, even then may not happen due to circumstances.
Widows/widowers remarry and a future spouse stands to inherit everything (nothing for my nieces/nephews or siblings) without a trust. I think a future spouse should inherit something but not everything. This pandemic makes us think about mortality being closer than we thought. We are healthy but so were many who died.
edit to add: I think it is very important to tell your heirs about your trust, perhaps send them a copy of it. If they don't know they are named in the trust and what entity to contact (bank/brokerage) they will only know what is in the will (that is public access). In my case my heirs may be waiting several years to receive trust money (after death of surviving spouse). This way at least one of my heirs might be aware they are due an inheritance and speak up. My grandmother told us exactly what was in her will and who her local attorney was, her main asset was her home. If we didn't know what was in her will the house would've been sold ASAP, not what she specified but if we didn't know we would've been in the dark. Most people don't know enough to request a copy of will from courthouse, I didn't know this was possible until much later.
Thank you very much! Very good pointers. We are starting to systematically review and update the beneficiaries on the financial accounts. The home is already jointly owned as are several but not all of the financial accounts.
My wife and I came to a tentative conclusion to proceed with individual wills for now and revisit the trust later when our retirement location and plans are clearer and we are able focus on creating an incapacity planning, which is our key concern. Our interest in a trust solution is not diminished and we plan to understand some of the tax and location specific implications for a trust.
I did a trust which also set up potential "special needs trust" should either of us developed dementia. The fee was considerably more than you are showing. My DH has passed and I do believe that now the trust is not needed but my sons feel more comfortable spending my trust money taking care of me if I become mentally incompacitated.
You have to trust your attorney... which I do. I did not purchase annuities but did shift monies around to fund the trust. Please question your attorney in detail about possible complications for overseas relatives receiving proceeds from a will or trust.
Thank you for the insightful questions. I am afraid we did not ask a lot of them (partly as we did not know this domain well) - hence the thread...
The meeting was set up in response to inquiry on a package of Will, Financial Power of Attorney, Medical Advance Health Directive for the two of us. In discussing that the lawyer advised us of the will versus trust equation and pluses and minuses around that. It can be called a upsell but, to be fair, the lawyer did not push us for one decision or the other. Since we did not go into it thinking trust, we did not have the questions ready.
It was not directly mentioned but I understood that we were discussing a revocable trust. We did not think to ask the tax question, though that is clearly very important. We did not know to ask the question about state tax implications of moving our condo into the trust. For now, we and the property (and the lawyer) are based in the same state.
The attorney did advise us generally on the executor question. She said that big banks are perhaps not the best options and that there are smaller and more specialized firms in the city that are small enough to develop a relationship with and big enough to be able to handle it over the coming decades.
The conversation includes a financial POA (I assume that becomes less critical with a trust) and a advanced medical directive.
For now, I am leaning towards sticking with a will. I realize this likely means that the amount we spend on it ($750) is likely wasted if and when we do a trust. But on the positive side, we are not necessarily ready with who (aside from each other) to nominate as our trustee if incapacitated, etc. These things being far away, it seems that $750 is not a huge amount to waste if it came to that (we wanted a trust after all).
The 750 is not wasted if you do a trust latter on. You need the basic will package.
The POA should be sufficient (depends on how it is drafted) to handle all of your needs while you are alive. I would not depend on the trust alone.
If you can find a free on line will you might go through the software to get an idea of questions to ask. But do hire a QUALIFIED ATTORNEY to draft the actual will.
And if you've got crap you want someone to have (guns, jewelry, figurines, cars...) consider giving it to them while you're alive. Trust me it makes things much easier.
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