An NJ Trust Attorney can Help Protect your Assets and Privacy

Nobody wants to give their money to the State of New Jersey when they die. Not outright or in the form of taxes. Most people want to leave as much money to their children, or other relatives, or charities, as possible. – Just not the State of New Jersey or the Federal Government. Also no one wants their probate lawyer to take a lot of money. If your attorney is recommending that he be named your executor, there had better be a good reason as Executors in the state of New Jersey get a percentage of the estate. That’s where a living trusts come into play. A Living Trust in New Jersey can help in avoiding probate and probate fees. If you need help with probate, my firm offers flat fee services.

In addition to avoiding probate there are many good reasons to use trusts to hold your assets:

• With a trust not only is the whole probate process avoided, but the assets of the trust are not open to review by the public in most cases.
• Irrevocable trusts can help in qualifying for Medicaid.
• Trusts are helpful in tax planning.
• Trusts can be used to manage your assets if you are incapacitated.

Different types of Trusts Provide Different Benefits – Special Needs Trust, Veterans Asset Protection and Gun Trusts

Trusts can be set-up to continue after your death for the benefit of your loved ones and can provide many benefits, including:

• A Special Needs Trusts – If someone is disabled and expected to need public assistance, a special needs trust can protect assets from being taken.
• Veterans Asset Protection Trust – This type of trust is designed to meet the new eligibility requirements from the Veterans Administration (VA) to protect assets of wartime veterans that may require VA benefits.
• Protection from Divorce –.Assets in a trust won’t be comingled with your ex-spouse’s assets. This helps protect your assets in the event of a divorce.
• Asset protection and Asset management – As long as the Trust and the distributions are not controlled by the beneficiaries a trust can provide asset protection and when the beneficiary is not capable or does not want to manage the trust assets, the trustee is in charge of doing the right things for the beneficiaries.
• Gun Trusts – Trusts can actually have ownership of things like automatic machine guns that are difficult for a person to own.

Another main benefit of trusts is privacy. For example, when the comedian Garry Shandling died in 2016, he left a probate estate with a net value of less than $668,000 according to TMZ. His net worth was suspected to have been near $17 million. There is no guarantee that he had a trust, but there appears to be $16 million missing from his probate estate. And, if he was protecting his privacy through a trust, it is easy to see that the Trust did its job.

Basically, if you don’t want nosey neighbors or distant relations to know your business when you die and want control of your assets after you pass a trust is what you should look into. The sooner you have a trust the sooner your assets are protected in case you eventually need Medicare, VA benefits or other public assistance.

Contact an NJ Probate attorney to answer any of your questions about trusts at (844) 5 – DEFENSE – (973) 200-1111 or email us at INFO@FocusedLaw.com.