Reply to Family trust, where do I start?

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Family trust, where do I start?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I'm curious also.  A family member has convinced my mom she needs a trust.  She is retired and has $1M in retirement accounts plus a paid off house valued at ~$800K.  I originally thought trusts were for the super rich and mom bought into the idea because she liked feeling rich enough to need a trust.  $1M is a lot for her generation (still is, just not as much as it used to be) and she's always been status conscious though it comes from a lifetime of being told she isn't "enough," which is sad.  Avoiding probate seems a nice benefit, but I have zero idea how much a trust costs to set up and it seems with retirement accounts and a paid off house as the main assets it wouldn't cost her children much to wait for probate beyond a year of property taxes and caring for an empty house.  The attorney she hired to set up her trust has told her to put material items, not just cash, in the trust.  She's asked us to tell her what furniture, dishes, etc. we want so she can include that in the trust.  Is that adding all of the "stuff" just padding the lawyer's wallet with more work for him/her? I can't imagine its a whole lot of extra work for them unless mom is making lots of changes.  But I also have a hard time thinking the household items would go through probate anyway.

FWIW I have no idea how the trust is set up and how much mom put in it. Mom has made it clear I'm less successful than this family member she's listening to so she's only interested in his advice.  Thus I've stopped engaging on the issue beyond "whatever you want to set up, mom, its your money."  It also seems a bit perverse for me to have too much interest in what happens with her assets after she passes (hopefully a long time from now).[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics