No matter your financial level or age, moving your assets to a trust will ensure they are properly managed for the benefit of your children or loved ones. A revocable trust not only allows you to efficiently transfer assets to your beneficiaries after you die, it can also allow you to manage those assets while you are alive. Simply put, a revocable is a trust is one that can be changed throughout your life.

Having a well-crafted plan that lays out how to handle assets such as properties you own, stocks, or savings accounts, as well how your debt and taxes should be managed, means you can keep your loved ones from guessing when it comes to your financial wishes. Especially during a time when they will already be grieving.

A revocable trust is also essential to protecting your children and your spouse should something happen to you. Having your finances accounted for in advance is critical to avoiding the decisions ending up in the courts.

No matter which type of trust you decide to use, Kiselstein Franckowiak Law Group will guide you through its creation with patience and clarity. We truly delight in seeing our clients understand the process and details.

A last will and testament has several functions, the first of which is determining how to divide up your assets and to whom to distribute them after you die. Whether it be family or charitable organizations, your direction on this will greatly ease the burden for your loved ones and help you establish the legacy you deserve.

Another important role of a last will and testament is to establish what happens to minor children should you or your spouse become incapacitated or die. Making sure decisions about who will be your children’s guardian or trustee is nothing you’d want to leave to fate.

A living will is another important document. This allows you to set your healthcare directives should you no longer be able to do so. Your plan for medical treatment, resuscitation, and organ donation are just some of the topics you’ll want to cover while planning for your end of life wishes.

Power of attorney is a document that allows for another individual to act on your behalf should you become incapacitated or die. This person will need to make important decisions regarding your finances or medical care so you’ll want to choose them wisely and make sure they have values that are similar to your own.

Kiselstein Franckowiak Law Group can craft your estate plan to protect your children’s inheritance from lawsuits, creditors, passing to their spouse from divorce, bankruptcy, loss of government benefits, and even payment of future estate taxes. This type of asset protection planning is done by establishing a Personal Asset Trust℠ (PAT) inside of your revocable living trust. It is drafted to be flexible and to adapt to a beneficiary’s changing life stages or personal situations.

See more about our Asset Protection services.

Special needs planning involves ensuring that any money or assets given to individuals with special needs can be effectively managed, not reduce or disqualify their government assistance, while still providing them with a high quality of life. Through special provisions or a special needs trust (also known as a supplemental needs trust) your loved one will be protected and still have the ability to pursue hobbies, recreation, and all the things that make them happy.

See more about our Special Needs Planning services.

As a business owner, creating an estate plan brings a different set of roles as it pertains to succession planning and taxes. Proper planning is vital to preventing your assets from being taxed upon your death, but more importantly it can keep your company alive and running after you’re gone. For small and family-owned businesses this is of extra importance.

For companies with multiple owners, a buy-sell agreement will establish the steps of transition ownership. These agreements often allow the surviving owners the ability to pay off the decedent’s beneficiaries in exchange for their share of the company.

Solo owners should establish a solid succession plan to ensure the company and its employees can carry on after the owner’s death. Creating a vision for how you’d like the business to be run and discussing your long-term goals with your successor is important. A buy-sell agreement will need to be crafted, and a transition plan put in place.

For tax purposes, trusts are either filed as simple or complex. A simple trust must distribute all income to the beneficiaries, it cannot distribute principal, and it cannot make distributions to charities. A complex trust does one or more of the things that a simple trust cannot do: it can accumulate income, distribute principal, or make distributions to charity.

With a complex trust, distributions can include ordinary income, stock, capital gains and even principal. There may also be a deduction for distributions to charities. The result of these extra abilities is that the allocation of the tax and any deductions between the trust and its beneficiaries can be quite complex, hence its name.

At KF Law Group we will guide you through the complex trust process in a clear and patient manner. Our attorneys are experts at navigating the tax intricacies and details that come with this type of trust.