5 Ways a Trust Lawyer Helps Protect Your Wealth
By Barry Zimmer on May 18th, 2017 in Wills & Trusts
A trust lawyer can provide you with invaluable assistance in protecting your wealth. You work hard for you assets and you do not want to put your money or property in danger of being lost. Understanding the risks that you face and using the right legal tools- like trusts- is vital to helping ensure that everything you have worked for can serve as a strong legacy.
Zimmer Law Firm can provide you with invaluable guidance on how trust law works in Ohio and we can provide assistance with the trust creation process. We can also help you to ensure that you make the right kind of trust or use other appropriate legal tools to protect the assets that you have worked so hard to acquire. Give us a call to find out more about the ways in which we help you to make trusts part of your comprehensive estate plan.
5 Ways a Trust Lawyer Helps You Protect Your Wealth
Trusts are a very powerful legal tool that are commonly part of an estate plan because of the protection that trusts can provide for assets and for heirs. There are many circumstances in which creating a trust makes sense, but a lot of people who are making an estate plan do not realize all that a trust could do for them. A trust lawyer can help you in important ways to ensure that your wealth is protected. An attorney can help you to:
- Determine if you need a trust: A trust is just one of many different estate planning tools that you can use. An experienced attorney can review your situation and help you to determine if creating a trust might be important for you. For example, you may need a trust if you want to avoid estate tax, if you want to leave money to a minor or if one of your heirs or beneficiaries is disabled and relying on means-tested Medicaid benefits.
- Identify the type of trust that you need: There are many different kinds of trusts. The protections provided by a revocable living trust are very different than the protections provided by an irrevocable trust. Your attorney will explain different trust options to you and help you to select the right trust type.
- Choose the right trustee to manage trust assets: You will need to select a trustee and a backup trustee to manage trust assets. For a revocable living trust, you may wish to be the trustee. For an irrevocable trust, you will need to select another trusted person. Your experienced attorney can explain to you what role the trustee will play and can assist you in selecting a person who you can count on to fulfill this role properly.
- Create a legally valid trust document: You need to create a trust document in accordance with the law so the trust is legally valid and so you can provide the appropriate instructions for what should happen to trust assets. Your attorney can prepare this document for you.
- Fund the trust so you get the desired protection for your assets. Once your trust has been created, you need to fund it with the assets that you want the trust to protect. Your attorney can assist with transferring ownership of assets to the trust and can help you to understand the implications for mortgages, taxes, and other legal matters.
These are just some of the many ways that a trust lawyer can assist you in keeping your assets safe so they can serve as a strong legacy. Your own specific situation will dictate both whether you need a trust and what type of trust could best protect you, so you should contact an experienced attorney for personalized advice specific to your estate planning goals.
Getting Help from A Cincinnati Trust Lawyer
If you are concerned about potential risks to your assets during your lifetime or after your death, you should not wait to talk with a trust lawyer. Zimmer Law Firm can assist you in understanding the possible sources of loss that could put your assets in jeopardy. We can advise you on the best risk mitigation tools and help you to create legally valid trusts that you need to keep your assets safe.
To find out more about how trusts work or about the services that we can provide to you to protect your assets and heirs, join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call at 513.721.1513 to get personalized assistance with trust creation or with all other aspects of estate planning. Call today to get started.