You may assume your Last Will and Testament document is enough to secure the administration of your remaining assets to your children as your designated beneficiaries. While this estate planning document offers this functionality, arguably a more effective legal tool available is a trust document. This is because a trust may allow you to control your assets from being jeopardized by external parties and factors at a time when you will no longer be around to manage them yourself. Without further ado, please read on to discover how a trust document can protect your children’s future inheritances and how a seasoned Broward County trust lawyer at The Probate Lawyers can help minimize the possibilities of legal issues and disputes.
In what ways can a trust protect my children’s inheritances?
Simply put, a trust document may provide powerful protection for your children’s inheritances during and after their distributions. That is, when talking about the act of distributing, you may leave your appointed trustee explicit directions on how to structure your children’s inheritances.
For example, you may permit distributions to satisfy healthcare or educational needs that may arise, once they reach a certain age, once they hit a certain milestone in life, etc. This way, you may avoid financial mismanagement that would most likely result from a lump-sum payment.
Then, in the time after these distributions are made, you may offer further safeguards by adding a spendthrift provision in your trust document. Mainly, this clause may bar most creditors from accessing the trust’s funds to collect for outstanding debts your child may have racked up.
Similarly, this provision may shield your child’s inheritance from being taken in a bankruptcy case as a way to satisfy debts; in a civil case to be used as a plaintiff’s financial award; and in a divorce case to be included in the equitable distribution of marital property.
Can I name multiple children in the same trust document?
You may find it redundant to establish a separate trust document for each of your surviving children. Well, you may be satisfied to learn that Florida law permits revocable living trusts to be structured in a way that benefits multiple beneficiaries or children.
Specifically, in using this format, your trust may either divide into separate sub-trusts for each child or stay as one trust but adopt different accounting procedures for each child’s share of the inheritance.
However, you must prepare for the chance that keeping multiple children in a single trust may open opportunities for comparisons, jealousy, etc. For example, one child may argue that the appointed trustee is acting partially towards another child, and make this issue a legal one.
If you want to ensure you have a strong legal strategy with a reliable team in your corner, please look no further than The Probate Lawyers. A competent Broward County estate lawyer from our law firm is ready to be of any service to you.
