Trusts in Texas Can Benefit Your Estate Planning and Other Needs
In this video, Attorney Ray Kerlick describes some of the reasons why you might use a trust in Texas.
Summary of the Trusts in Texas Video
– – Hi, this is Ray Kerlick from Wadler Perches Hundl and Kerlick. Reaching out from our Fulshear office. Basically today wanting to touch base and talk a little bit about trusts in Texas. Texas trusts is an item that we get a lot of inquiries about.
A lot of people have heard different things about trusts. What they are, and what they can do. It’s absolutely a service that we can provide, and we can help you set up a trust if that makes sense. Again, typically the situation depends on your assets and the types of things you’re trying to achieve.
Are You Trying to Avoid the Probate System?
Most of the time the reason that people are trying to look at trusts in Texas is threefold. First of all, we’re trying to avoid the probate system. In Texas that’s less important than it is, for example, in California, or some of the western states where the probate process is much more cumbersome.
Are You Looking for More Control over Assets?
The second reason that most people are looking to think about a trust is to have a little bit more control over their assets after they’re gone. And so by creating some trusts in Texas we can make sure that we know exactly what’s going to happen to our assets even after we’re gone.
Are You Looking for Privacy?
Finally, there’s privacy issues that most people have concerns about. It may be that you want to make sure that you’re keeping as much out of your name and out of the public record as possible. So a trust is a great way to do this. We can put things into a trust. If it is an irrevocable trust, it essentially takes that asset completely out of your name so long as you have no ability to get back to it.
Other Reasons for Trusts in Texas
There’s a couple other important scenarios in which we’d be looking to talk about a trust. Certainly, if you’re in a situation where inheritance tax is an issue, right now the exemption level is basically $11.2 million for a married couple, so this doesn’t come into play as often as it used to. But certainly if those laws were to change, and they have regularly changed, that would certainly be something that you should be looking at, if it potentially affects you.
The other is if I have a special needs child or special needs family member that I really want to make sure that I can help. Now, a lot of times most of you who have dealt with this will understand that people who are receiving certain types of governmental benefits will have very strict restrictions on what types of income and assets they can hold. We can get around that, but using what’s called a Special Needs Trust. A Special Needs Trust allows you to fund this family member, without disqualifying them from governmental benefits. So there are relatively specific restrictions on how those kinds of trusts apply, but it’s certainly something we can help you set up.
The other thing that is often talked about and discussed is setting up various types of charitable trusts. These are kind of a very specialized situation where perhaps you want to make sure that you’re funding things like a family graveyard. Perhaps there’s a church event that you want to sponsor for an ongoing period of time. We can help you set up a charitable trust that will allow you to continue to fund this type of charitable event or situation in perpetuity, or at least so long as the money holds out. So these are all ideas that we can help you with. We can also discuss some of the tax savings that you might be able to enjoy by using a trust.
If you’re interested, please contact our offices at 800-929-1725. So set up an appointment and we’ll be happy to discuss with you. Thank you.
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