Philadelphia probate law and commercial litigation blog

Creating an estate plan or a last will gives you control over what happens with your assets when you die. The same process also helps provide you with peace of mind by making it easier for you to know that your family will have the resources they need when you die.

You will probably put a lot of careful thought into who gets what and why. If you have a trust as part of your estate plan, you may even choose to put rules in place about when a beneficiary accesses those assets and how much they can withdraw at any given time. You can prevent people from using estate assets wastefully or while they are too young to appreciate their value.

You and your spouse trust and respect one another, so it's no surprise that you might think of your spouse as the ideal candidate for a business partner. While you may work well together as spouses, it's important to consider how a business partnership could impact your family life and vice versa.

You need to make certain you have your own space, as well as plans for handling the conflicts that will inevitably arise. With a little planning and foresight, it may be possible for you to successfully start a business with your spouse, provided that you address some key issues as soon as possible.

There are many reasons that people want to create a trust and fund it with their home. Maybe you work in a risky profession and worry about the potential for a lawsuit that could leave your family vulnerable if someone comes after your personal assets. Perhaps it is part of a broader estate planning strategy to mitigate estate taxes and reduce the risk of your heirs abusing the assets you leave behind. There are many potential benefits to such a transfer.

Regardless of why you have decided to transfer your Pennsylvania home into a trust, you need to make sure that you do so properly. As with any estate planning or real estate efforts, it is almost always beneficial to seek legal counsel throughout the process to avoid making mistakes that could lead you and other people you care about financially and legally vulnerable.

There are many ways to control how your property is managed and distributed upon your death. While a will is a popular estate planning tool, you may want to consider combining it with the power of a living trust.

There are many benefits of a living trust, including:

• Avoid probate: If you only have a will, your assets are required to go through probate before reaching your heirs. With a living trust, however, the assets in the trust are not subject to probate. This allows for a more efficient transfer of property.
• Important for incapacity planning: There is more to an estate plan that what happens upon your death. You must also have a plan for protecting yourself in the event of incapacity. With a living trust in place, your trustee can step in to manage your affairs.
• Privacy protection: Do you have concerns about you privacy once you're gone? A will is public record, which allows anyone and everyone to review your assets and where they ended up. A living trust is not public record, thus allowing you to distribute your assets with complete privacy.
• More control over your estate: For example, maybe you want to leave assets to a child who may have difficulty managing money early in their life. With a living trust, you can designate that they don't receive their inheritance until they reach a specific age or milestone (such as graduating college).
• Easy to create: A living trust is more detailed than a will, but with the help of a Philadelphia estate planning attorney it's easy to create. Furthermore, with a revocable living trust, you can make adjustments as necessary in the future.