Help from a Fort Lauderdale Trust Planning Lawyer

While many people in Florida believe that revocable trusts are used to avoid probate, there are also multiple other benefits to creating revocable living trusts. Fort Lauderdale trust planning lawyer Rhonda D. Zimmerman, Esq. regularly helps her clients establish and fund revocable living trusts to provide them with several benefits. Some of the advantages of creating a revocable living trust are discussed below.

Help With Avoiding Probate

Revocable living trusts are created during the grantor’s life and can be revoked by the grantor or changed at any time. Grantors can name successor trustees who can assume administration of the trusts’ assets after the grantors die. When a grantor dies, the revocable trust transforms into an irrevocable trust, meaning that it cannot be changed. The successor trustee then distributes the assets held in the trust to the trust beneficiaries outside of the probate process, providing the family members with a faster and more private process.

Help With Medicaid Planning

When people grow older, they might need Medicaid to pay for nursing home care. Qualifying for Medicaid to pay for nursing home care can be tricky, however. Creating a revocable living trust and drafting a Florida Medicaid will help to protect your assets if you need nursing home care in the future. You can include a provision called an “elective share trust for Medicaid planning” that will allow you or your ill spouse to retain your benefits or pay a smaller Medicaid penalty than you might otherwise be assessed while allowing your trustee to manage your assets.

Protecting People With Disabilities

You can also use a revocable living trust to protect you if you become incapacitated or your loved one with special needs. You can draft a trust that will protect your beneficiary with special needs from losing his or her Supplemental Security Income benefits. You can also include a provision that gives a lifetime interest in your estate for your disabled loved one.

Help With Minimizing Estate Taxes

If you have a very large estate that exceeds the value of the federal estate tax exemptions, you can facilitate the transfer of your assets to your spouse with a revocable living trust. If you are unmarried, you can also create a trust that will help you manage the impact of a generation-skipping tax or to assist you with charitable giving.

Help to Protect Children of First Marriages

If you have children from a former marriage and have since remarried, you likely want to ensure that your children from your previous marriage will not be disinherited after you die. You can protect your children with a revocable living trust by including provisions designed to prevent your spouse from disinheriting them.

Help With Business Succession Planning

If you have a business with one or more partners, you can use a revocable living trust to help with succession planning if one of the partners passes away, leaves, or becomes incapacitated. You can use your trust to appoint a successor trustee who can help to continue your business’s operations and include a buy-sell agreement to allow for the sale of the former partner’s interests.

Ease of Administration

Revocable living trusts are frequently simpler to manage than wills. You can use your trust to choose who will administer your property after you die. There are also fewer documentation requirements to prove the validity of your trust than there are for a will.

Talk to an Experienced Fort Lauderdale Trust Planning Attorney

If you want to learn more about the benefits of creating a revocable living trust, you should speak to an experienced Fort Lauderdale estate planning attorney at the Law Offices of Rhonda D. Zimerman, Esq. Call us today to schedule an appointment at (954) 822-7566.