Answers to Frequently Asked Living Trust Questions
Joint accounts are owned only by those specifically participating in the account. In most cases, upon the death of one joint account holder, the remaining account holders continue to own the contents of the account.
Standard Legal has drafted its Living Trusts so that the children of the maker(s) of the Trust, who are presumed to be the ultimate beneficiaries of the Trust in most instances, are not named as Trustees or Successor Co-Trustees.
That may seem contradictory to many families since the primary reason a Trust has been considered is to provide protected assets to a family’s heirs, but this limitation in structure is based in sound logic.
What actions a Co-Trustee can take in regards to the assets of that Trust depends upon the language contained within the Trust document itself.
A Trust is a stand-alone legal entity, separate from a person and the liabilities created by an individual.
If a person\’s estate is worth in excess of $1.5 million (i.e. $1,500,000), with the proper planning a married couple can take advantage of a marital tax credit, thereby reducing (or reducing the likelihood) of significant federal estate taxes.
The decision as to which type of Deed a person should use to transfer property to another depends upon the type of guarantee the person making the transfer wishes to provide.
It is not possible to create a stipulation within a Last Will and Testament that prevents access to the distributed assets of an estate by your heir’s spouse. But there are other options.
The Trustee may transfer property and manage the Trust assets without re-executing the Trust each time.
If by ‘represent’ you mean in court or in a lawsuit, the answer is no.
A non-lawyer cannot represent a separate legal entity (in this case, a Trust) in any legal proceeding.
And an executed Power of Attorney document would have no bearing on this restriction.
While a Durable Power of Attorney vests the person named attorney-in-fact with very broad powers and authority, revoking or modifying a Trust may be outside the scope of such document.