The mother and father of one of my asset protection clients wants to give my client (their son) and his wife their homestead property after they decease. The parents are concerned about subjecting their homestead to medicaid claims in the event they both leave the home to reside in a nursing home. They also want…
Only a few states have enacted asset protection trust legislation to provide creditor protection through a self-settled irrevocable trust. Those states with domestic asset protection trust (DAPT) statutes compete with one another by maintaining laws that attract investment assets to their state from people seeking asset protection benefits. In 2013, Utah enacted a revised domestic…
Prior to 2011, when the estate tax exemption was much lower, most estate planning attorneys preferred to separate spouses’ assets in separate living trusts to make sure each spouse received their full estate tax exemption. Joint trusts which are not properly drafted or maintained can forfeit one or the other spouse’s exemption.
Bank accounts owned jointly by a husband and wife are exempt from the individual creditors of either spouse as tenants by entireties property.
A prospective client had established several years ago an irrevocable trust. The trust provided that all income be paid to the client, settlor, during his lifetime, and that upon his death the balance of trust property went to other named beneficiaries.
According to judicial decisions in Florida a person who served as trustee of a trust which held real property for the benefit of another person could expose the real property to the trustee’s personal creditors. These cases held that real property titled in the name of a trustee belongs to the trustee in his individual…
