Using Trusts to Protect and Manage Your Assets
You can choose from a wide array of trusts to help pass your estate to your children and reduce or avoid estate taxes. Finding the right trust or combination of trusts for your needs requires the assistance of an experienced estate planning attorney.
At Raskin & Makofsky, our founding lawyers each have more than 20 years of experience helping clients plan for the future and protect their assets. We believe each client is unique and we will work with you to develop a strategy that is tailored to fit your particular situation.
If you would like to schedule an appointment to discuss trusts and estate planning with an attorney at our firm call (516) 228-6522 or contact our offices online.
Protecting Your Assets from Taxes and Medicaid
Trusts are vital tools in asset protection, helping you keep taxes and long-term health care costs from reducing your estate. While you still may be responsible for certain taxes, a trust may be able to help you reduce your tax burden and protect the assets from creditors such as Medicaid. A trustee is appointed to manage, invest and distribute the assets according to the terms of the trust.
Examples of commonly used trusts include:
- Irrevocable Trust: can be used to shelter assets from Medicaid and can also reduce estate taxes.
- Revocable Trust: allows you to manage your money while you are still able, and to have a trustee manage your money if you become unable to do so. Trust assets pass to beneficiaries without probate.
- Insurance Trust: removes the proceeds of a life insurance policy from your taxable estate, thereby increasing your beneficiaries' inheritance.
- Special Needs Trust: an essential part of special needs planning, this provides long-term support for a special needs child or adult by making payments that supplement the care that a child is getting under government entitlement programs such as Medicaid and SSI. Special needs trusts also provide money management tools for an individual with special needs.
- Testamentary Trust: can be used to protect a disabled child, to protect spendthrift children and may include tax planning trusts, including credit shelter trust also known as bypass trusts, A/B trusts and disclaimer trusts.
This is a very brief overview. You should talk with an attorney to find out what trust or combination of trusts is best for you. To schedule an appointment with a lawyer at Raskin & Makofsky call (516) 228-6522 or contact us online. We would be happy to meet with you.
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*Certified by the National Elder Law Foundation.
The National Elder Law Foundation is not affiliated with any governmental authority. Certification is not a requirement for the practice of law in the State of New York and does not necessarily indicate greater competence than other attorneys experienced in this field of law.
