Trusts Attorney in Fairfax, Virginia

What types of trusts are commonly included in estate plans?

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The most common trust, there’s many, many different types of trusts and they come under different names, the most common trust in an estate planning context is the revocable living trust, some people call them inter-vivos trust, some people call them grantor trust. This is basically, a trust where the person creates an agreement with themselves, they then create this trust agreement, they name themselves as the initial trustee and they’re also the initial beneficiary for that matter. And then they retitle their assets in the name of the trust. A primary reason for doing a revocable living trust oftentimes is to avoid the time, effort, and money that goes into probate when you die. If you assets are in a trust and you’ve named a successor trustee either when you lose your capacity or you pass away, the successor trustee simply stands in your shoes and is able to continue working with your assets, distributing if that’s what you’ve told them to do or continuing to told them for the benefit of other folks if that’s what you said in your trust. So that’s the main type of trust you might have in estate planning. Other’s might be special needs trusts; others might be irrevocable trusts and there are sometimes reasons for an irrevocable trust as well.

Fairfax, VA estate planning attorney Christopher T. Craig talks about the role of trusts in estate plans.

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