Indianapolis trust lawyers can help you to set up a trust. Trusts are powerful legal tools that you can use to protect your family and assets during your lifetime and after you have passed on. However, many people make mistakes when it comes to creating a trust and they end up not making the right type of trust or not following the formalities necessary for a trust document to be valid.
You need to ensure that you make the right kind of trust and that you fulfill all of the requirements to get the protections that you are expecting from that trust. The best way to do this is to talk with Indianapolis trust lawyers at Frank & Kraft who can guide you through every step of the trust creation process.
You should give us a call as soon as possible for help to begin making your trust, as you don’t want to leave yourself, your assets and your loved ones unprotected. You can also read on to find some basic tips about how to get started with the process of setting up a trust.
How to Get Started With Setting up a Trust
If you want to set up a trust, there are a few things you will need to do before you actually begin to make your trust document. Some of the different things that you may want to do include:
- Determining what kind of trust you need to serve your goals: A living trust serves different goals than an irrevocable trust. While an irrevocable trust could allow you to protect assets from creditors and could potentially help you to get qualified for Medicaid coverage for nursing home care without impoverishing yourself first, a living trust won’t provide these benefits. A living trust is useful for incapacity planning and for transferring assets or wealth to new owners.
- Determining who should serve as your trustee: A trustee is one of the most important roles to fulfill. The trustee manages estate assets and facilitates the trust administration process ( which is an alternative process to the probate process). You trustee will have a lot of power over your wealth and over what happens to your children’s inheritance once you pass on, so you should make sure that you’ve selected a trustee who you think shares your values.
- Determining who should be your beneficiaries and if you want to impose any conditions: You likely created your trust, at least in part, to provide an inheritance to a friend or family member. You’ll need to decide who the beneficiary will be who receives the assets held in the trust. If you want to impose conditions, like requiring the recipient get a college degree before receiving distributions of trust assets, you should work with a lawyer to handle the creation of your trust document.
- Creating your trust document: If you are thinking about creating a trust document, we can help you with the process. We’ll make sure that you have provided all of the instructions that you intended to offer.
- Funding your trust: Another common misconception is that once you have set up the trust, you are done. This is not necessarily true. You need to transfer the assets into the trust that you hope will be protected by it. If you have not transferred anything into a trust, you have not actually protected any of your assets.
These are all steps that Frank & Kraft can provide you with invaluable help completing. You should not try to handle trust creation on your own as often mistakes won’t be discovered until it is far too late and your family or finances are already suffering because the trust did not provide the advantages that you expected it to. Our legal team will explain what kind of trust you need and will help you with the entirety of the process of making sure the trust you create is valid and serves its intended purpose.
Getting Help from Indianapolis Trust Lawyers
Indianapolis trust lawyers will guide you through all of the steps you need to make a trust. Don’t miss out on the chance to use this powerful legal tool for your financial benefit. Just join us for a free seminar to learn more about all of the different options for trust creation and about the pros and cons of each option. You should also give us a call if you need any assistance with an existing trust or you otherwise want help structuring an estate plan, legacy plan or financial plan. Just give us a call at 317-684-1100 or contact us online to speak with an experienced member of our legal team.
Mr. Kraft assists clients primarily in the areas of estate planning and administration, Medicaid planning, federal and state taxation, real estate and corporate law, bringing the added perspective of an accounting background to his work.
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