Estate Planning, Probate & Elder Law Attorneys

» Attorney: Now is the Time to Plan Estate

"We've got all kinds of antibiotics that will kill everything right now. And we do too, right now."

Louisville attorney Turney P. Berry made the assessment to those assembled for the 23rd National Conference on Equine Law, which opened a two-day run April 30 at the Embassy Suites hotel in Lexington. via Blood Horse

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» Podcast Status

A couple of things:

1. The podcasts don't take very long to record, but they take a while to write (no, for the most, I'm not improvising). I'll try to get the next one up this coming week, hopefully by Saturday at the latest.

2. You can now download the Death and Taxes podcast on iTunes. If you go to the iTunes store and search for "death and taxes blog podcast," you can find it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how else you can find it -- there's no "legal" category in iTunes, so I'm stuck in the "business" category. Anyway, you can listen to or download individual episodes, or subscribe to the podcast.

» Wills with Testamentary Trusts

I usually talk about estate planning in terms of two different approaches:

Simple: having a simple Will, where you give away all of your property outright

vs.

More involved: having what's known as a pourover Will and a separate living trust. You give your property away in your living trust -- you leave it to a trustee, who holds it for one or more beneficiaries

But there's also a middle way, which involves having only a Will, but incorporating trusts into that Will. This is known as having a Will with a testamentary trust. What's the drawback to this approach, and why isn't it more popular?

Well, when I talk about the advantages of a living trust, I address 5 of them in particular:

1. Probate avoidance
2. Control
3. Creditor protection for beneficiaries
4. Privacy
5. Estate tax minimization

If you create trusts under your Will rather in a separate document, those trusts can't be funded during your life (since your Will has no effect until death). As a result, you will need a probate. Your beneficiaries also don't get privacy, since the trust information is all located in your Will, which is a public document. But the other three advantages still exist.