A qualified personal residence trust only works if you live long enough to outlive it. If you die before the trust term ends, the value of your home will go right back into your taxable estate. Every QPRT is a gamble on time, and costly mistakes come from miscalculating that gamble or the rules surrounding…
An irrevocable trust protects only what you actually put into it. Sign the trust agreement, but leave the deed and accounts in your own name, and the trust sits empty while those assets are exposed to estate taxes, creditors, and probate. Funding is where poorly drafted plans most often fail. Mistake #1: Signing the Trust…
You may find yourself in situations where you need someone to sign documents or authorize transactions on your behalf when you cannot do so yourself because you do not have the time, cannot be at a signing, or due to other circumstances. However, you might create a power of attorney to give a trusted loved…
A special needs trust can help protect assets for a disabled individual who requires Medicaid benefits to afford care. These trusts can also help pay for certain expenses to improve beneficiaries’ quality of life. However, a trust might not spend all the money it holds before its beneficiary dies. What happens to a special needs…
If you and your family own valuable and important assets, such as real estate or businesses, you may worry about what could happen to your wealth if debts or other financial issues become a problem. However, you can act before problems arise to protect your or your family’s wealth through asset protection planning. The law…
After a person passes away, estate administration can formally transfer their property to the heirs entitled to inherit from them. However, an affidavit of heirship may provide a more efficient alternative to traditional probate when winding up a deceased loved one’s estate in Texas. But under what circumstances can you use an affidavit of heirship…
After you’ve written your will, you may have significant life changes that make parts of your will outdated. You might consider updating your will, but how do you update an existing will without starting over from a blank page? Fortunately, Texas law provides an option for updating a will without writing a completely new one….
Permanent physical incapacity or advanced age may lead a person to require long-term care for their medical and personal needs. However, such care can become incredibly expensive. Individuals may require Medicaid benefits to help with the cost of long-term care. They might use a Miller trust to qualify by allowing an applicant to meet the…
You may decide to leverage the benefits of trusts to pass on your wealth to your loved ones. However, trusts require careful planning to ensure you do not inadvertently exclude valuable assets from your estate plan. Pour-over will provide a powerful tool to help maximize the effectiveness of your other estate planning strategies, such as…
Families with substantial assets have complex financial and tax planning needs, especially when developing an estate plan to manage wealth and pass it on to subsequent generations. Some high-net-worth families can achieve their financial, legal, and philanthropic goals by incorporating a charitable lead trust into their estate plan. But when might a charitable lead trust…
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