079: Revocable Trust

Revocable living trust

https://corteslawfirm.com/revocable-trust/

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Cortes Law Firm

5801 Broadway Extension Hwy Suite 110

Oklahoma City, OK, 73118

405-213-0856

Transcript

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Revocable trust. Revocable trust, in my opinion, is the center of a revocable living trust centered estate plan. It's the fundamental foundation of your estate plan because it says what needs to happen during your incapacitation and what happens after you pass away. If we put a revocable trust up against a last will and testament, there are several advantages to the revocable trust. A trust maintains your confidentiality. You've heard me talk about this a lot before, that when you have a revocable trust the information in that trust is confidential. It's your information. The only people that are really entitled to see it are your trustees, your successor trustees, and really your beneficiaries and even your beneficiaries there is some argument that they really are only entitled to see the sections of the trust that actually pertain to them. So that's very important. A trust, a revocable trust maintains your confidentiality as opposed to a probate, where if you have a last will and testament or you don't have a last will and testament, and you have to go through the probate process, everything that's in that probate down at the courthouse is usually always public record. So anybody who wants to can just go down to the courthouse or even attend hearings and hear and see exactly what's going on in your probate. Number two, revocable trust also gives directions on what happens if you become mentally or physically incapacitated. The revocable trust will work in conjunction with ... Like I said, the center point of your revocable living trust Centered estate plan. And it will work in conjunction with your power of attorney if that's needed. Hopefully not. And your health care power of attorney. But the revocable trust allows and gives directions for what you want to happen if you were to become incapacitated. And because you have funded everything correctly and everything's in the name of your trust, your successor trustee can simply step in and take over your assets now and take over the assets, I should say, for your benefit. Right. Because they have a fiduciary to take care of you. If you had the last will and testament or nothing at all, then your loved ones would have to go down to the courthouse and most likely get a guardianship, basically a living probate right over you while you're living to take care of you. And that is why it is so important that you recognize that estate planning takes care of you, during your lifetime with proper funding. In other words, proper trust funding, your revocable trust will work, hopefully exactly like you intended it to do. But if you leave assets out of your trust, then your trustee does not have control over them. And that's why it's so important to have your trust as the foundation of your trust. Because if you have also done a power of attorney as part of a complete package then that power of attorney, if you're still living, can go out and change the title of that asset that is not in your trust and put it into the trust for distribution and for for for them to be able to have control over it under the terms of the trust. Now, that's in great opposition to if you have no estate planning whatsoever, your family would again have to go get a guardianship to take care of those assets that are not in the trust or just take care of those assets in general because there is no direction by you on what you want to happen with those assets. And those could be bank accounts, financial accounts. It could be commercial real estate that you own little rental houses of your own, maybe a side business, whatever it is. But it's really important because a revocable trust will give direction to your successor trustee on how to take care of those assets and what to do with them so that you are taken care of exactly how you want to be taken care of.