Publisher Description

A comprehensive guide to living trusts, with expert financial and legal guidance The Living Trust Advisor is an expert guide for both advisors and their clients on the complex process of establishing, living with, and maintaining a living trust. Written by renowned family inheritance attorney Jeffrey L. Condon, this book discusses the various aspects of this important document, and shows you how to manage a seamless transfer of assets to various beneficiaries. This new second edition has been fully updated and revised to reflect the extensive changes to the Estate Tax Law that have taken place since the initial publication, giving you the most up-to-date information and guidance on preserving your wealth and helping your heirs avoid estate tax liability. You'll develop a vision for your trust before you ever meet with an attorney or other key players, and learn how to establish and maintain a trust that remains rock-solid for your lifetime and beyond. As the living trust has replaced the will as the primary means of settling after-death estates, clear guidance and current legal information is of utmost importance for advisors and clients alike. This book is a valuable resource for every stage of planning and execution, helping you ensure that you provide for your beneficiaries the way you intend.

• Know what to think about before your first meeting with a lawyer
• Establish and manage your living trust to carry out your wishes
• Identify potential inheritance problems and build solutions into the trust
• Distribute assets to future generations, and protect them after the transfer

Dealing with complex financial and legal issues while facing our own mortality is a difficult task, but making these decisions is critical to the future outcome of your estate. The Living Trust Advisor expertly guides you through the process so you can be confident that your wishes will be carried out.

Back Cover

The last great lesson you leave to your family is the inheritance plan you make in your Living Trust. Creating a Living Trust that effectively carries out your inheritance instructions requires more than just printing out "one-size-fits-all" forms, checking off a few boxes, and signing where instructed. You and your financial advisor have to know the real-world impact of the words you inject into the document. Otherwise, your family, and the assets you leave to them, may become victim to the Law of Unintended Consequences. Fully revised and updated to reflect the most recent laws and best practices in the Inheritance Arena, this Second Edition skillfully shows you step-by-step how to create a Living Trust that easily and seamlessly transfers your lifetime of accumulations to your spouse, children, grandchildren, and other beneficiaries. While such a discussion can become a dry and complex "slog-fest," Jeffrey L. Condon's enthusiasm, humor, and easily understandable style leap from the pages to walk you through the process of obtaining the life-enhancing gift of a Living Trust that's right for you and your family. He shares with you, and your financial advisor, his three decades of hard-won wisdom on the human and monetary sides of inheritance planning through straightforward and easy-to-understand explanations that: Address the very important inheritance issues that you must consider before your first meeting with your Living Trust attorney. Spell out how to live with your Living Trust during your lifetime. Reveal how you can "die knowing" that your Living Trust's inheritance instructions will be faithfully and legally carried out to the letter. Guide your family away from "inheritance minefields" that can create conflict, division, and estrangement. Share valuable tips on ensuring that your Living Trust's assets will be protected after your passing for your children...and from your children's risks and problems. Even with changing trends and evolving laws, the Living Trust will always be the main vehicle in America for the after-death transfer of your assets to your family. And you and your advisor can always rely on the latest edition of The Living Trust Advisor to explain everything you need to know about your Living Trust ... for your eternal peace of mind.

Flap

The last great lesson you leave to your family is the inheritance plan you make in your Living Trust. Creating a Living Trust that effectively carries out your inheritance instructions requires more than just printing out "one-size-fits-all" forms, checking off a few boxes, and signing where instructed. You and your financial advisor have to know the real-world impact of the words you inject into the document. Otherwise, your family, and the assets you leave to them, may become victim to the Law of Unintended Consequences. Fully revised and updated to reflect the most recent laws and best practices in the Inheritance Arena, this Second Edition skillfully shows you step-by-step how to create a Living Trust that easily and seamlessly transfers your lifetime of accumulations to your spouse, children, grandchildren, and other beneficiaries. While such a discussion can become a dry and complex "slog-fest," Jeffrey L. Condon's enthusiasm, humor, and easily understandable style leap from the pages to walk you through the process of obtaining the life-enhancing gift of a Living Trust that's right for you and your family. He shares with you, and your financial advisor, his three decades of hard-won wisdom on the human and monetary sides of inheritance planning through straightforward and easy-to-understand explanations that: Address the very important inheritance issues that you must consider before your first meeting with your Living Trust attorney. Spell out how to live with your Living Trust during your lifetime. Reveal how you can "die knowing" that your Living Trust's inheritance instructions will be faithfully and legally carried out to the letter. Guide your family away from "inheritance minefields" that can create conflict, division, and estrangement. Share valuable tips on ensuring that your Living Trust's assets will be protected after your passing for your children...and from your children's risks and problems. Even with changing trends and evolving laws, the Living Trust will always be the main vehicle in America for the after-death transfer of your assets to your family. And you and your advisor can always rely on the latest edition of The Living Trust Advisor to explain everything you need to know about your Living Trust ... for your eternal peace of mind.

Author Biography

JEFFREY L. CONDON, ESQ. has practiced in trust, estate, and probate law since 1987 at the law offices of Condon & Condon in Santa Monica, California. With his late father, Gerald M. Condon, he is the coauthor of Beyond the Grave: The Right Way and the Wrong Way of Leaving Money to Your Children (and Others), the bestselling inheritance planning book in American publishing history, which the Wall Street Journal called the "best estate planning book in America." When not tending to his clients' Living Trusts and inheritance matters, Jeffrey enjoys swimming 3,000 meters daily with Southern California Aquatics, dining with his lovely girlfriend, Kim, listening to '70s and '80s pop music, getting together with his lifelong friends, and finding opportunities to spend quality time with his grown children.

Table of Contents

Pregame Warm-Up Or, Read This Before You Read This Book xiii Acknowledgments xxv The First Quarter: Establishing Your Living Trust 1 Chapter 1 How You Established Your Living Trust Without a Clear Understanding of What It Is and How It Works Or, You Don't Know What You Don't Know about Your Living Trust 3 Chapter 2 What Does the Living Trust Do, and How Does It Do It? Or, The Best Explanation of the Living Trust You Will Ever Get 11 Chapter 3 Do You Really Need a Living Trust? Or, Don't Let Someone Sell You Something You Don't Need 17 Chapter 4 Establishing Your Living Trust Or, No Better Way to Get Started . . . Than to Get Started 26 Chapter 5 Who Should You Select as the Lifetime Agent of Your Living Trust? Or, If You Become Incapacitated, Will Your Lifetime Agent Manage Your Living Trust for Your Benefit . . . or for His? 39 Chapter 6 You Can Select Your Children as Your After-Death Agent, but Will They Carry Out Your Living Trust's Inheritance Instructions? Or, "That Was Our Parents' Wish, But It Ain't Our Wish" 54 The Second Quarter: Living with Your Living Trust During the Lifetimes of You and Your Spouse 67 Chapter 7 Functions of Your Living Trust While Both You and Your Spouse Are Alive Or, Don't Quite Forget about Your Living Trust after You Have Thrown It into Your Safe-Deposit Box 69 Chapter 8 The Five Concerns about the Real Estate You Transferred to Your Living Trust Or, You Still Own Your House! 86 Chapter 9 Should You Tell Your Children about Your Living Trust? Or, Don't Dismiss the Chance to Have a Family Inheritance Meeting—specially If the Lawyer Won't Charge You 96 The Third Quarter Living with Your Living Trust after the Death of Your Spouse 105 Chapter 10 Will You Divert Your Deceased Spouse's Half of the Living Trust Assets from Your Offspring? Or, How to Make Your Children Fret and Hope That You Will Do the Right Thing 107 Chapter 11 The Power to Change Your Deceased Spouse's Inheritance Instructions . . . or Not! Or, If Your Child's Vice Dissipates after Your Spouse Dies, Are You Allowed to Change Your Spouse's Inheritance Instructions to Meet That Change? 115 Chapter 12 Dealing with Your Living Trust If You Remarry Or, The Battle Royal: Your Second Spouse Versus Your First Children 125 Chapter 13 Dealing with the Estate Tax Return, Splitting the Living Trust Assets, and  O her Tax Stuff That You Would Rather Just Ignore after Your Spouse Dies Or, As Much as You Want to, Don't Skip This Chapter! To Prevent Estate Taxes after Your Death, You Must Deal with Estate Tax Matters after Your Spouse's Death 133 The Fourth Quarter Dying with Your Living Trust 163 Chapter 14 Distribution of Your Living Trust after Both You and Your Spouse Are Dead Or, The Inheritance Arena Is Not for the Fainthearted 165 Chapter 15 Don't Intentionally Leave Your Children Unequal Inheritances Or, So What If One Needs It More Than the Other? 171 Chapter 16 The Accidental Unequal Inheritance Or, If You Think You Have Treated Your Children Equally by Leaving Them Equal Inheritances, I Have Some News for You! 178 Chapter 17 Don't Make a Child Who Owes You Money a Debtor to Your Other Children Or, An Unforgiven and Unpaid Loan to a Child Can Wreak Havoc after Your Death 187 Chapter 18 Do Not Leave Your Child an Outright Inheritance Or, I'm Not Kidding! Don't Leave Your Child an Outright Inheritance 195 Chapter 19 Using Your Living Trust to Force Your Child into a Conventional Lifestyle Or, If the Twig Is Bent, Will Force Do Anything to Straighten It Out? 230 Chapter 20 The Success of the Third-Party Irrevocable Protection Trust (PUPPET) Depends on Whom You've Selected as the Third Party Or, Try Not to Appoint One Private Person to Hold and Manage Money for Another Private Person 237 Chapter 21 Who Are Your Grandchildren? Or, Do You Really Want Your Living Trust Assets to Ultimately Wind Up with Your Son's Second Wife's Kids from Her First Marriage? 247 Chapter 22 The IRS Is Back! And This Time, It's for Real! Or, "Sorry about Your Parents' Deaths. That Will Be $200,000, Please." 254 Chapter 23 Who Pays the Estate Tax? Or, Don't Make One Person Pay the Estate Tax on Living Trust Gifts That Go to Another Person 265 Postgame: Review and Lessons Learned 277 Chapter 24 Question and Answer Time! Or, Take the Opportunity to Ask This Expensive Lawyer Your Questions . . . at No Charge 279 Chapter 25 A Random Sampling of Cautionary Tales from the Inheritance Arena Or, Read About, and Learn from, My Previous Mistakes and the Mistakes of My Clients 298 About the Author Or, An Invitation from the Author to Contact Him at No Charge 371 Index 375

Long Description

Praise for THE LIVING TRUST ADVISOR "Jeffrey Condon is both a lawyer and a coach a rare combination. He puts both talents to work in this new edition of The Living Trust Advisor , transforming what could have been a deadly read into one that not only instructs, but keeps you smiling along the way. Families and their advisors know far too little about living trusts, but this accessible book will go a long way toward remedying that." Gregory Curtis, Chairman and Founder, Greycourt & Co., Inc. "Jeff nails it! A guide to living trusts that's loaded with weighty advice yet reads like a friendly conversation over coffee. This book brings real life to living trusts and will lead to new energy in talks with your family and with your lawyer." Hartley Goldstone, Wise Counsel Research Associates; coauthor of Family Trusts: A Guide for Beneficiaries, Trustees, Trust Protectors, and Trust Creators The Authoritative Guide to Living Trusts The renowned family inheritance attorney and author of the bestselling Beyond the Grave continues to share sought-after guidance on how you can create a seamless and effective inheritance plan that's right for you and your family. Fully updated and revised to cover the most recent estate tax law changes and best legal practices in the Inheritance Arena, this Second Edition offers you a reliable resource and guidebook for every stage of the Living Trust process, from establishing your Living Trust, to living with it, to carrying out its inheritance instructions after you're gone. Expertly written with Jeffrey L. Condon's trademark enthusiasm, humor, and easily understandable style, The Living Trust Advisor gives you straightforward and "horse-sense" advice on how to: Avoid common pitfalls in your Living Trust by examining cautionary tales from the real world Prevent family conflict and battles that often arise when your family divides the "family money" Understand why you still need to deal with the estate tax, even if you believe the estate tax does not apply to you Protect your children's inheritance from their financial risks and other problems, thereby securing a future for your succeeding generations The Living Trust Advisor, Second Edition walks with you step-by-step as you develop a low-maintenance Living Trust before your first meeting with your attorney, and illustrates how to establish, maintain, and carry out a rock-solid Living Trust for your lifetime and beyond.

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