How Does a Trust Work in an Inheritance?

It’s not easy to create an estate plan without the guidance of an experienced estate planning attorney. They can help work through the many moving parts and address concerns about how family members will respond to your plan to pass on assets. A recent article from msn, “3 Reasons to Seriously Consider Using a Living Trust to Pass an Inheritance to Your Family,” says. At the same time, you may think keeping things simple with a last will and testament may be sufficient, but there are also good reasons to use a living trust.

If you have many beneficiaries, a living trust allows you to control assets while living and after you’ve passed. If you have a large family and want to include grandchildren, nieces and nephews in your estate plan, the living trust is easier than a will. Beneficiaries can be easily added or removed, as events like marriage, birth and divorce occur within the family.

The living trust allows you to get very specific about exactly how much of which asset you want to pass to each beneficiary. If your heirs include minors, a living trust consists of a trustee who can manage their assets until they reach a certain age. You can also determine at what age you want beneficiaries to receive your wealth. You might, for instance, decide to give a grandchild their inheritance not when they reach the age of majority (legal age) but when they turn 30.

Do you own real estate property? This asset can be tricky to bequeath in a will, especially if you own property in multiple states. Your estate would have to go through probate in each state, which all have their own rules and laws. This becomes expensive and time-consuming. Retitling real estate property into a living trust means the properties don’t need to go through probate. Your estate planning attorney will help make this an efficient process.

Trusts should be in your estate plan if privacy is important to you. Most people don’t know their wills become public documents as part of probate. This means anyone who is interested can read your will. This could be an estranged family member who feels they were wrongfully left out of the will, an ex-spouse, creditors, salespeople and thieves.

The public nature of probate is another reason why wills should not contain any specific account information, like account names, numbers, or the amount of money in the accounts. For the same reason, the names of digital assets, including user names and passwords, should never be included in a will.

Trusts are one of many means of passing assets to heirs without anyone except the grantor (the person creating the trust), the trustee (the person in charge of managing the trust), and the beneficiaries knowing about the trust’s existence and what it contains. This is especially important if your situation includes someone you wish to keep in the dark about your assets or your intentions.

Meet with an experienced estate planning attorney to discuss the different ways to pass wealth to loved ones, including a will and trusts. Learning what options are available will allow you to make an informed choice.