Transcript summarized below:
Revocable Trusts
Often called a living trust, a revocable trust is an estate planning tool that allows the grantor the ability to make changes to the direction and management of their assets at any time.
For example, after your revocable trust agreement is established, you as the grantor may decide to add or remove a beneficiary, update beneficiary percentages, modify trust terms, etc.
Some of the more common reasons people setup revocable trusts are for:
Privacy & Avoiding Probate: Having a revocable trust allows the grantor's family and beneficiaries to bypass the expensive, time-consuming public probate process while maintaining privacy of the estate that would have otherwise been made public had a trust not been in place.
Flexibility: Revocable means, well, it can be revoked. The grantor has the ability to change or dissolve the trust should she change her mind about how her assets will be distributed and managed.
Asset Management and Distribution: In the event of the grantor's mental or physical incapacitation, revocable trusts can be used to guarantee that the assets are managed and disbursed in accordance with the grantor's wishes.
Out-of State Assets: If the grantor owns real property, or plans to own real property in multiple states, a revocable trust will avoid separate probate hearings in the other states and instead be governed by the state in which the trust was created.
What revocable trust won't do, however is save you money on estate taxes or protect your assets from creditors. This is critical to understand as some people hear the word "trust" and automatically think creating one will accomplish these things.
If minimizing taxes and asset protection are important to you, an Irrevocable Trust may be the better route to go.
