When we talk to our clients about trusts, there’s generally two big categories that we talk to people about. We talk about trusts that are inside of a will and we talk about trusts that are freestanding from a will.

So first on trusts that are inside of a will: if people have children that haven’t turned 18 yet, frequently if something happened to the adults, they wouldn’t want their children to have the money quite yet. The children aren’t quite ready, and so we frequently do trust for minors inside of Wills to help look after the money until the person is old enough to take care of the money themselves.

We also sometimes do a similar type thing for people with special needs. So if they are unable to take care of things themselves but for a different reason than age. A third type of trust that we sometimes do inside of a will is for someone that has capacity issues, Alzheimer’s or dementia, or some other kind of mental health condition that prevents them from really being able to look after assets and take care of things themselves.

Other types of trust that we do, and some can be inside of a will and some can be outside, are for tax planning purposes. So if people are in a wealth situation where they are subject to federal estate tax, then we try and set up a trust for them that helps minimize the amount of taxes that they would pay.

The last kind of trust that I mentioned is trust outside of a will. We call those revocable living trusts, and those have become more and more popular over the years for people that are trying to handle all of their probate while they’re alive. That is, transfer all of their assets into a trust now so that when they die, they can try and avoid probate altogether.