Basic Advice: Set Up a Living Trust

Suze Orman, from O (Oprah) Magazine, strongly advises her readers to set up living trusts. Here is what she has to say:

In What to Do When a Family Members Abuses an Inheritance in this month's O Magazine and featured on the website, she strongly advises setting up a trust to prevent someone from taking wayward control of your estate. Read the article to find the facts, but her solution is the same "mak[e] sure they have a revocable living trust with an incapacity clause."

In Leaving a Legacy on the O Magazine website, she repeats her standard advice by saying "we've covered this before, but it bears repeating: Create a living revocable trust, and make that trust the beneficiary of all your sizable assets (including your home)..."

In Why Gift Can Be Costly on the O Magazine website, she says it again -- set up a living trust and clearly explains how cost basis works and repeats her advice about setting up a trust even in gifting situations. In fact, she says, "[s]o if they're intent on giving a gift, make it cash. For appreciable assets such as stocks or real estate, it's better to make the gift an inheritance through a revocable trust."

Contact your own estate planning attorney for more information.

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Estate Planning, Probate and Trusts involve complex areas of law. Individual circumstances must be considered before any advice can be given.  The general information above is not to be construed as legal advice, which can only be given after consideration of the unique facts of each matter. Please seek the advice or counsel of your attorney, financial advisor or CPA as it may be appropriate.

Comments

[Grace]

Your article on Living Trusts is great. I strongly believe in having this conversation with my family although they do not want to talk about it with me. I think it is becuase of the fear something will happen.
So I found a product called the dovetail organizer which stores all of your life information, including medical history, prescriptions, dosages, care givers, living will instructions, funeral arrangements and wishes, charities of choice, family tree, etc. I have stored my data in it along with digital images of my documents and gave a copy to each of my kids. So now if something does happen they each have a copy of my intent of how I wish to be treated,my wishes for them in distributing my assets and lastly how I want my life to be celebrated when I pass. Check out the website of www.dovetailorganizer.com
It is really inexpensive and gives you a really good framework of the information you either have or need to find. Enjoy your articles. Grace

[Valencia]

It is very important to plan our estate in proper time because an estate plan gives us much greater control over who will inherit our assets after our death. There are many cases when our relatives, no matter how remote, may have priority in inheritance ahead of the state. And they may not be our choice of heirs. We should think of it carefully.

[Joey Santino]

Grace,

That is really cool! Nice find, what a great idea. I think my inner child is afraid to set up a living trust. I must do it soon though.