Alan Clopine, CPA is joined by special guest Tom Lawler, an estate planning associate with law offices in San Diego. Al asks Tom common questions regarding living trusts and wills, then the two discuss differences between the various types of trusts individuals can choose from.
Important Points:
0:28 “Should I get a will or a living trust?”
1:24 “The idea behind a trust is to avoid those things, you want to go inexpensively, privately and quickly; that’s really what the trust does for you versus the probate which might last a year”
1:43 “There are different types of living trusts—why don’t you explain that?”
1:55 “Simple trust, A/B trust and disclaimer trust—those are the basic three that we use over and over”
2:03 “If you’re a single, unmarried person you would use a simple trust”
2:13 “The A/B trust is primarily set up to use that first spouse’s estate tax exclusion”
2:45 “So with the A/B trust, you essentially have another tax entity; you have to file a trust return at that point—the survivor does. So now you have half the assets in that trust and half the assets in the original living trust which is a flow through where you don’t have to file”
3:00 “Now what about a disclaimer trust, what does that do?”
3:57 “So the disclaimer trust gives you the ability to split it if you want to, but you don’t have to; and if you don’t have to, it’s much simpler”
