Revocable Living Trust
If you own real estate and/or have $184,000 worth of liquid assets, we strongly recommend you create a living trust to avoid Probate and ensure your estate is passed to your heirs hassle-free.
The six (6) benefits of having a living trust.
Establishing a Revocable Living Trust is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your family. It not only helps you organize your legal matters while you are alive, but it also provides the most straightforward approach to transferring your assets after death without court involvement.
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1. Avoid Probate
A Living Trust assists in avoiding the need for your loved ones to go to court for probate. Probate is a legal process that transfers the ownership of your belongings to your beneficiaries. The Superior Court oversees paying debts, selling possessions, and dividing your estate to the heirs. This judicial procedure can take one to three years and is, mostly, mandatory regardless of having a will.
A California Revocable Living Trust helps in avoiding probate and your property is distributed to your heirs without going through this process. By transferring your assets to a Living Trust now, you can spare your family from the costs and delays associated with probate court.
2. Management During Incapacity
A Living Trust protects you if you become incapacitated. Without a Living Trust, the court would appoint a conservator to manage your property and require the payment of court costs, conservator fees, and attorney fees while you are incapacitated. With a Living Trust, you choose someone you trust to step in for you as a successor trustee and avoid those expensive conservatorship fees.
3. Protect Your Family
When you use a Living Trust, you get to choose how you will take care of the welfare of your beneficiaries, like children, grandchildren, elderly parents, and those with special requirements. You also decide at what age they will get their inheritance, with California assuming they are already grown-ups at 18.
A Special Needs Trust, on the other hand, helps you to provide for relatives who have physical or mental disabilities without depriving them of government benefits and shielding their assets from creditors.
4. Control Distribution
With a Living Trust, you maintain full control of your assets during your lifetime…buying and selling as you desire. Upon your death, your Living Trust controls when and where your assets go, referred to as distribution, rather than the State deciding who will receive your life's work.
5. Saves Taxes: Income & Estate Tax
A Living Trust can help reduce taxes (Capital Gains, Estate, and Income Tax). By transferring your community property out of joint tenancy and into a Living Trust, you can avoid the income tax of approximately 30% when it is sold after the death of your spouse/domestic partner. The surviving spouse and Trustee will also receive a stepped-up tax basis on the primary residence held in Trust upon the death of the first spouse. Visit the Domestic Partners Registry for more domestic partner information.
6. Privacy
A Living Trust ensures your family’s privacy because the details of Trust Administration are not open to the public as probate proceedings. This also offers some protection against certain creditors.
Call (800) 280-0663 and schedule your complimentary consultation today!
Estate Planning Package
ULTRA's Estate Planning Benefit Program offers and educates families on how to avoid the probate courts, conservatorship, and other traps put in place by the government. This comprehensive estate planning program includes the following legal documents:
Revocable Living Trust
This document creates the entity to which you transfer ownership of your assets and also contains your instructions for managing your assets during your lifetime and for their distribution upon your death. ELIMINATE probate and optimize estate tax law.
Pour-Over Will
Also known as a Last Will and Testament, this document states that any assets left out or not transferred to your Revocable Living Trust during your lifetime will become part of (poured over into) your Revocable Living Trust upon your passing. If married, documents are included for both Husband and Wife.
Financial Durable Power of Attorney (POA)
POA Outlines and gives a person of your choice authority to manage your financial affairs if you become incapacitated due to accident or illness. If married, the documents are included for both Husband and Wife.
Advanced Health Care Directive
Also referred to as Health Care Durable Power of Attorney, this document outlines and gives a person or persons of your choice authority to make decisions about your health care if you become incapacitated due to accident or illness. If married, documents are included for both Husband and Wife.
Directive to Physicians
Important document outlines your wishes about continued life support care. If married, documents will be included for both Husband and Wife.
Community Property Agreement
For a married couple, this document clarifies who owns what at the time the trust document is established and establishes property available for full step-up basis. (Community Property States Only)
Deed Transfer
Trust Transfer Deeds necessary to properly transfer ownership of your real property to you Revocable Living Trust. These documents create the legal assignment of your property from you as individual or married persons, to you as Trustee(s) of your Revocable Living Trust.
Funding the Trust
By transferring your assets into your Living Trust, you bring them under the legal protection of this powerful estate planning tool. Once the trust is funded, the assets it holds will be protected from probate and offer your family peace of mind.