Marlborough – If you’ve never considered creating a trust because you think trusts are only for multi-millionaires, think again.
Trusts can preserve assets, control where assets go, ease your heirs’ access to funds, and protect privacy, said Robert Ryan, an attorney with 18 years experience in tax law and estate planning, who has a private practice, Estate Planning and Protection Law, in Marlborough.
“A lot of people don’t know they have options when drafting trusts,” he said.
The first step in estate planning, he noted, is to make sure the basics—incapacity documents and death documents—are in place. Incapacity documents include a power of attorney, a health care proxy and living will, and may include a trust. Death documents are a will and a trust to administer assets. Couples with minor children should create a trust to control the disposition of assets and to pick who oversees those assets to avoid the need for a court-appointed conservator for the children.
But those documents are only the beginning of effective estate planning.
Trusts, Ryan said, can preserve the full benefit of estate tax exemptions. Most people think they don’t need to worry about those exemptions because their assets do not exceed the current federal tax exemption of $5.25 million per person