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Is Your Living Trust Current? Is it Properly Funded?
David Casey, Attorney
365 Broadway, Suite 203, El Cajon, California Telephone (619) 447-6780 - E-mail: Familylaw1@aol.com
A very important question I'm asked all the time is, "how often should I update my trust?" Living Trust Attorney Review Service, Update Living Trust Is Your Living Trust Current? Update your trust before it to late. Remember if a trust is outdated it could end up in probate Court. This is something you want to avoid. Probate court is costly.
When should you update a living trust?
It's a very good idea to update your living trust or your California estate plan every few years or after a significant life event change such as divorce, death of a family member, marriage, the birth of a child and or a grandchild, or adoption. Service. I would like to stress that a trust should be reviewed by an attorney regularly. It is normally up to you to make sure it is updated. No matter what, a living trust should be reviewed every 3 to 5 years by an experienced trust attorney. For most trusts, a review every third year is acceptable. Most of the time a review of a living trust takes about one to two hours for a typical trust under two million. This includes the Durable Power of Attorney and Health Care Directive. The cost to review the trust is nominal with a complex trust review a little more depending on the contents. However, if my office prepares the updated documents, 75% of the review fee applies to the cost of the redraft of a trust package. So most of the review fee is used as a discount towards your new or amended documents which could include updating your Power of Attorney and Health Care Directive.
If one of the following events occur, you should have your trust reviewed. Living Trust Attorney Review Service, Update Living Trust.
You should amend your trust in the
following situations:
You need to reevaluate what your trust indicates about your wishes from time to time. You may find that you have changed your mind about who you want as a trustee of your estate, or who you may want to receive more or less of your estate. Update your power attorney, change trustee of your estate. You need an attorney One of the most common changes is changing the trustee. You might want to change it from one of your children to another since one has moved out of state and it would be difficult to manage it. You might have had your spouse listed as the trustee but he or she might not be able to manage it due to uncertain health problems. You might have had selected joint trustees but now you feel that this will no longer be desirable. There are many reasons a trust should be updated and it is not uncommon to update it every three to five years.
This also applies to updating your health care power of attorney. Perhaps you selected one of your children who now cannot carry out their duties because that child has moved to another state. Perhaps the trustee was divorced or is having problems in their own life. It might be a good idea to change how that person is paid to protect the assets that person will receive.
Your should always update your living trust after any Significant life events, divorce, death, birth, or substantial change in in your life. Marriage, death, a child or even your children getting married.
Is Your Living Trust Current? Update your trust before it to late.
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