An Indianapolis trust attorney will provide help with selecting the correct type of trust to create. Trusts are versatile and powerful legal tools that can help you to achieve many different goals, from protecting your wealth to protecting your loved ones. But, the very versatility that makes trusts so useful can also make it difficult for individuals to create trusts without getting legal advice. The problem is, far too many people make the wrong type of trust and end up not getting the benefits and protections they were actually expecting to receive as a result of trust creation.
Frank & Kraft can help you to make certain that you make the correct trust type so you get the protections that you created the trust in order to provide. We can also assist you with the process of actually creating your trust document and making sure you follow all legal formalities and make your instructions clear. You should definitely work with an Indianapolis trust attorney in the process of creating a trust because mistakes could end up costing you a fortune and could cost your family security. We can help to make sure that this does not happen to you.
What are the Consequences of Making the Wrong Type of Trust?
If you make the wrong kind of trust, the biggest consequence is that the trust may not accomplish whatever you expected it to do in terms of protecting your wealth. For example, many people decide to create a trust because they are trying to protect their money and property from being lost if they require nursing home care.
If you need nursing home care, Medicaid is probably the only source of payments for this care because Medicare and private insurance only pay for skilled services and not for the routine care that most nursing home residents need. Since Medicaid is for low income people, there are resource limits.
If you have too many assets, you won’t be able to get coverage. If your goal is to protect your wealth from being lost and to make sure you can get covered by Medicaid when you need coverage, you may decide to create a trust. Unfortunately, if you create a living trust and you still have control over trust assets, the assets will still count for determining if you can get Medicaid so you won’t get the expected protections. You could end up not qualifying for Medicaid even though you thought that you would, which can result in you losing out on the protections that you expected to receive.
This is just one of many examples of how making the wrong kind of trust could cause you to experience substantial financial loss. The same problems could arise if you make a trust to try to avoid estate tax, as many people wrongly believe that a living trust allows them to avoid these taxes since assets held within the living trust pass outside of probate. However, while the assets in the living trust don’t have to go through the probate process, the assets do still count when determining if estate tax is owed and in what amounts.
Mistakes like these often are not discovered until it is too late to correct the problem and make the proper type of trust. By the time it is discovered that the trust which was created will not keep wealth safe, you may already need Medicaid and be ineligible for it or the trust creator who intended to use the trust to avoid estate tax may have already passed away. You don’t want to take a chance on mistakes that could cost you and your family a fortune so you should get the right legal help from the start to avoid costly errors.
Getting Help from An Indianapolis Trust Attorney
An Indianapolis trust attorney at Frank & Kraft will listen closely to your goals for protecting your family and assets and will help you to make a choice on whether a trust is right for you as well as on the type of trust that you should create. We can also provide you with guidance on the actual process of creating and funding your trust to help you ensure that your trust is legally valid and made in accordance with state requirements.
To find out more about how an Indianapolis trust attorney at Frank & Kraft can help you with all legal issues related to creating a trust, join us for a free seminar. If you are ready to get personalized help creating your trust, give us a call at 317-684-1100 or contact us online today.
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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