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Estate Planning & Probate Specialists

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Estate planning can help with protecting inheritance for children

A sense of pride comes with knowing that there are assets available to pass down to a family’s next generation in Texas. However, it can also be unsettling to think about the possibility of losing control of all the wealth that has been accumulated through hard work. This is why a trust can be a helpful estate planning tool.

Instead of transferring an asset outright, a parent can establish a trust for transferring wealth to his or her children. Trusts offer the benefit of helping to protect assets in case a divorce happens. This is possible because, when a trust owns assets, the children who are to receive the assets do not directly own them. Therefore, it is a lot harder for their spouses to go after these assets during divorce proceedings.

Parents can also add provisions that restrict how much control a beneficiary has over the assets in a trust. This may help to further protect a trust if a divorce were to happen. Additional layers of protection include adding many beneficiaries rather than just one, or setting up a trust that is designed to last for many generations rather than being one that provides only outright distributions based on age.

Estate planning can understandably be complicated and thus overwhelming. This is why consulting an attorney is paramount before embarking on the estate planning process. An attorney in the state of Texas can help with drafting wills and establishing trusts that ensure that wealth goes to the intended beneficiaries down the road.

Source: wtop.com, “How to protect inheritances for future generations“, Nina Mitchell, April 19, 2017

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