An Illinois revocable living trust can help you preserve assets and pass them down to relatives. This very popular estate planning structure is easy to set up with a lawyer’s help and easy to maintain during your lifetime. If you create one, your estate may avoid the costs and time of going through probate.
What Is a Revocable Living Trust?
A revocable living trust is an estate planning structure that allows you to retain control of assets during your lifetime. You become the creator of the trust and also act as its trustee during your lifetime. As a result, you can place assets in trust while still managing and controlling them as trustee. Also, you can change beneficiaries, remove property from the trust, and change some terms of the trust as you wish.
In contrast, you lose all control over assets when you place them in a irrevocable trust during your lifetime. But an irrevocable trust provides better protection from your creditors, because they cannot access the assets in the trust. Creditors can access assets in a revocable living trust during your lifetime because you maintain control over them.
What Are the Benefits of Creating a Revocable Living Trust?
The benefits of a revocable living trust come into play after you pass away. By the terms of the trust, it will become irrevocable (unchangeable) upon your death. A successor trustee named in the document will take over for you in managing and controlling the assets.
Because your estate has no ability to change the trust, trust assets are not part of your probate estate. If you placed all of your assets in the trust, your estate will probably not need to be probated in court. This can save a lot of time and money, plus your estate will not be reduced by those costs. This means more money passed on to your chosen trust beneficiaries.
Further, you may save on estate taxes as long as you placed your assets in trust long before your death. (The IRS may still tax your estate if you funded the trust shortly before you died.) For people with larger estates, paying expensive estate taxes can be a significant concern. A living trust that becomes irrevocable can keep assets out of your taxable estate.
If you are interested in creating an irrevocable trust, talk to a local estate planning attorney. He or she can review your estate, advising you on creating and funding the trust.
Want to start planning your estate? Local attorney Andrew Szocka, Esq. provides thorough and speedy estate planning help in the Chicagoland area. To schedule a free initial consultation, visit the Law Office of Andrew Szocka, P.C. online or call the office at (815) 455-8430.