1. To Take Care of Your Assets for Your Children- If you have minor children they will need someone to manage your assets for them. Even if you only have a house and a few investments, if both you & your spouse die in a car accident, say, your children will probably have to go live with someone else. In that case your house will have to be sold and the money will have to be reinvested in stocks, bonds, cd’s, etc.
Who will do that for them? You will need someone to deal with a real estate agent, sign a listing agreement, decide on a listing price, negotiate with buyers, sign the sales contract, perform all the tasks that a seller must do to complete a sale. So even if you have children who are no longer minors, would they be able to do all that? Probably not- many adults can’t do it. So if you haven’t appointed a trustee (by writing it in your trust document) the court will appoint a stranger to do it for your family.
After the house is sold the trustee will have to manage the investments of the trust to get the highest rate of return (income) possible while keeping the assets safe. That’s the main job of a trustee, to safeguard the assets for the beneficiaries of the trust (usually, the kids) and make distributions according to the trust document.
2. To Provide Flexibility in Making Decisions- If your children are young the trust will have to be managed for many years. Oftentimes parents will set up the trust to give discretion to the trustee regarding how much to distribute to each child each year, that is, the trustee decides. If children are young that would mean giving living expenses or a monthly allowance to the guardians of the children, the people who are taking care of them. If kids are going to college, they might need money to buy a car, for example. That would be an extra distribution that the trustee would have to decide on. Most trustees may give $ 12,000 to buy a used Honda but would not give $ 100,000 for a Lamborghini.
Even if your children are in their twenties, oftentimes, clients set up a time schedule for distributions of principal, that is, all of the assets that went from you or your estate to your trust. Usually if there are no problems with, say, drug or alcohol abuse, parents will write in their trust that the trustee should distribute one third of the principal when a child reaches age 25, one half when they reach age 30 and the balance when they reach age 35. This helps to give out the assets when the children become a little more mature. You must have a trust to do this.
You can describe other things you would want your trust to pay for, such as, giving a child money to start or buy a business, or for the down payment on a house.
If you have a child who has a drug or alcohol abuse problem, you can provide that they must be clean and sober for one year subject to testing before they receive any distributions.
These are only three reasons to have a trust. There are many more. Stayed tuned for future blog postings! Or subscribe to our RSS feed. You can get more trust and tax tips from our monthly newsletter. Just subscribe below! Or you can always call us at the Law Offices of Patricia Rowe 925-256-1000. Or you can visit my website at www.PatriciaRowe.com !
