AARP The Living Trust Advisor: Everything You Need to Know about Your Living Trust

by Jeffrey L. Condon

Overview

Many of us spend a lifetime building wealth and accumulating assets, but fail to properly plan how all of this will be passed on once we are gone. And while dealing with complex financial issues such as inheritance and estate taxes forces us to face our own mortality, making these difficult decisions is something we all need to do.

Living trust attorney and bestselling author Jeffrey Condon is extremely familiar with these types of situations and understands the importance of a living trust in an increasingly uncertain world. Now, with The Living Trust Advisor, he skillfully discusses the various aspects of his document and details how it can provide a seamless transfer of assets to your spouse, children, and other beneficiaries after you are gone.

Written in a straightforward and accessible style—and peppered with Condon's trademark humor—The Living Trust Advisor puts the living trust in perspective and walks you through the four life phases associated with it. Page by page, this practical guide will help you:

• Address the numerous issues that should be considered before first meeting with a living trust lawyer and other key players in this arena

• Establlish and manage your living trust over the course of your life as well as prepare it to carry out your financial wishes once you and your spouse have passed on

• Identify potential inheritance problems now, so you can build solutions into your living trust before it's too late

• Distribute living trust assets to future generations and protect those assets once the transfer is complete

• And much more

Throughout the book, Condon provides you with real-world examples that illustrate key points or clarify particular concepts. While many of these examples are drawn from Cardon's professional relationship with clients, some anecdotes are associated with his personal experiences in this field.

If you've picked up this book, then you're probably thinking about putting together a living trust. Or, perhaps you have a living trust and you're looking to revisit it. Whatever your reasons, this reliable resource contains the straightforward advice and practical insights you need to create and maintain a living trust that will ensure your final financial wishes are carried out in full.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781118230992
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	12/20/2011
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	879 KB

About the Author

Jeffrey L. Condon is an attorney at Condon & Condon in Santa Monica, California, where he has practiced in trusts, estates, and family inheritance planning for twenty years. With his late father, Gerald M. Condon, he is the coauthor of Beyond the Grave: The Right Way and the Wrong Way of Leaving Money to Your Children (and Others), which is the bestselling inheritance planning book in American publishing history, and was called "the best estate planning book in America" by the Wall Street Journal. He is a frequent public speaker and commentator, having appeared on CNN and CNBC, and has conducted seminars for a multitude of organizations and charities, including Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Washington Mutual Bank, and American Insurance Company.

Table of Contents

Preface.

Or Read This Before You Read This Book.

Acknowledgments.

The First Quarter. Establishing Your Living Trust.

Chapter 1. How You Established Your Living Trust without a Clear Understanding of What It Is and How It Works.

Or You Don't Know What You Don't Know About Your Living Trust.

Chapter 2. What Does the Living Trust Do, and How Does It Do It?

Or The Best Explanation of the Living Trust You Will Ever Get.

Chapter 3. Do You Really Need a Living Trust?

Or Don't Let Someone Sell You Something You Don't Need.

Chapter 4. Establishing Your Living Trust.

Or No Better Way To Get Started? Than To Get Started.

Chapter 5. Who Should You Select as the Lifetime Agent of Your Living Trust?

Or If You Become Incapacitated, Will Your Lifetime Agent Manage Your Living Trust for Your Benefit…or for His?

Chapter 6. You Can Select Your Children as Your After-Death Agent, but Will They Carry out Your Living Trust's Inheritance Instructions?

Or “That Was Our Parent's Wish, but It Ain't Our Wish”.

The Second Quarter. Living with Your Living Trust during the Lifetime of You and Your Spouse.

Chapter 7. Functions of Your Living Trust While Both You and Your Spouse Are Alive.

Or Don't Quite Forget About Your Living Trust after You Have Thrown It into Your Safe Deposit Box.

Chapter 8: The “Five Concerns” About the Real Estate You Transferred to Your Living Trust

Or You Still Own Your House!!

Chapter 9. Should You Tell Your Children About Your Living Trust?

Or Don't Dismiss the Chance to Have a Family Inheritance Meeting – Especially If the Lawyer Won't Charge You.

The Third Quarter. Living with Your Living Trust after the Death of Your Spouse.

Chapter 10. Will You Divert Your Deceased Spouse's Half of the Living Trust Assets from Your Offspring?

Or How to Make Your Children Fret and Hope That You Will “Do the Right Thing”.

Chapter 11. The Power to Change Your Deceased Spouse's Inheritance Instructions.

Or How to “Lord Over” Your Child with Threats of Changing Your Living Trust

Chapter 12. Dealing with Your Living Trust If You Remarry.

Or The Battle Royale: Your Second Spouse Vs. Your First Children.

Chapter 13. Splitting the Living Trust Assets after Your Spouse Dies, Preparing Your Spouse's Estate Tax Return, and Other Tax Stuff That You Would Rather Just Ignore.

Or As Much as You Want To, Don't Skip This Chapter! To Prevent Estate Taxes after Your Death, You Must Deal with Estate Tax Matters after Your Spouse's Death.

The Fourth Quarter. Dying with Your Living Trust

Chapter 14. Distribution of Your Living Trust after Both You and Your Spouse Are Dead.

Or The Inheritance Arena Is Not for the Faint-Hearted.

Chapter 15. Don't Intentionally Leave Your Children an Unequal Inheritance.

Or So What If One Needs It More Than the Other?

Chapter 16. The Accidental Unequal Inheritance.

Or If You Think You Have Treated Your Children Equally by Leaving Them an Equal Inheritance, I Have Some News for You!

Chapter 17. Don't Make a Child Who Owes You Money a Debtor to Your Other Children.

Or An Unforgiven and Unpaid Loan to a Child Can Wreak Havoc after Your Death.

Chapter 18. Do Not Leave Your Child an Outright Inheritance.

Or I'm Not Kidding! Don't Leave Your Child an Outright Inheritance.

Chapter 19. Using Your Living Trust to Force Your Child into a Conventional Lifestyle.

Or If the Twig Is Bent, Will Force Do Anything to Straighten It Out?

Chapter 20. The Success of the Third Party Irrevocable Protection Trust (Tippit) Depends on Whom You've Selected as the Third-Party.

Or Try Not to Appoint One Private Person To Hold and Manage Money for Another Private Person.

Chapter 21. Who Are Your Grandchildren?

Or Do You Really Want Your Living Trust Assets To Ultimately Wind up with Your Son's Second Wife's Kids from Her First Marriage?

Chapter 22. The IRS Is Back! and This Time, It's for Real!

Or “Sorry About Your Parents' Deaths. That Will Be $200,000 Please”.

Chapter 23. Who Pays the Estate Tax?

Or Don't Make One Person Pay the Estate Tax on Living Trust Gifts That Go to Another Person.

Post-Game. Review and Lessons Learned.

Chapter 24. Question And Answer Time!

Or Take the Opportunity to Ask Your Questions to This Expensive Lawyer …for No Charge.

Chapter 25. A Random Sampling of Cautionary Tales from the Inheritance Arena.

Or Read About, and Learn From, My Previous Mistakes and the Mistakes of My Clients.

About the Author.

Or An Invitation from the Author to Contact Him for No Charge.

Index.