Attorney Ora Schwartzberg, Plymouth, NH A major concern of many of our clients is how to protect their children’s inheritance from a future divorce. If planned in advance, such protection can be incorporated into your Revocable Living Trust. One of the ways to offer such protection is to leave your children’s inheritances to them in Trust rather than leaving it to them outright. Each child’s Trust would provide for the appointment of an Independent Distribution Trustee who is not related to or subordinate to (i.e., under the control of ) your child. It is important that this Independent Truste ..read more

When you pass away, your family may need to file documents with the Probate Court in order to claim their inheritance. Although having a Will is a good basic form of planning, a Will does not allow you to avoid probate. Instead, a Will simply lets you inform the Probate Court of your wishes—then your loved ones must go through the probate process to make your wishes legally binding. There are three key reasons why you may want to avoid probate. It is all public record. Almost everything that goes through the courts, including probate, becomes a matter of public record. This means that in order ..read more

Although leaving your hard-earned assets outright to your children, grandchildren, or other beneficiaries after you die may seem like the easiest and most desired form of distribution, this scheme will make their inheritance easy prey for creditors, predators, and divorcing spouses. Instead, consider using discretionary trusts for the benefit of each of your beneficiaries. What is a Discretionary Trust? A discretionary trust is an irrevocable trust set up to protect the assets funded into it for the benefit of the trust’s beneficiary. This can mean protection from the beneficiary’s poor money ..read more

Equality is a noble concept and one many people turn to when deciding how to divide up their estate. There are many circumstances in which equal distribution of assets among beneficiaries is the right choice, but there are some cases where identical inheritances do not make the most sense. In such situations, the difference between what is equal and what is fair is obvious. Let us take a look at an example of each: Equal Division In hypothetical one, you have three kids and want to divide your assets and wealth equally among them. All three at are similar places in their lives, have received s ..read more

The Domestic Asset Protection Trust A domestic asset protection trust (DAPT) is a legal structure into which you (in your role as the grantor) transfer your accounts and/or property. Once transferred into the DAPT, the DAPT may offer protection from future lawsuits, divorcing spouses and creditors. Even though you have transferred these assets to the trust, you can continue to enjoy the benefit of this property in the DAPT, with some limitations. DAPTs work on the legal principle that someone cannot take away from you something that you no longer own. When you transfer ownership of your proper ..read more

Myth #1: If | need help paying my bills, | can just add my child to my bank account. Nothing bad will happen. False. When you add a child or anyone else to your bank account, you are making that person a co-owner of the account. Your child can pay bills using the money in your bank account, but your child can also use the money for any other purpose. This is because your child now co-owns the account. In addition, because the bank account would be deemed owned by your child, it would be susceptible to division in a divorce, seizure in a lawsuit, and theft by a predator. Myth #2: Giving someone ..read more

When you met with an attorney a few weeks ago, perhaps you expected that all you needed was a simple will. Maybe you thought that, with your situation, the work should be easy and the documents should be few. But now that you have finished working with the attorney, your parting gift is a large binder filled with hundreds of pages. You may be wondering, “Why is my trust so long?” Creating a comprehensive plan for your future involves numerous different and critical elements. Working with a lawyer to create an estate plan, with its various documents, provisions, and pages is complicated, even i ..read more

To read more about Ora Schwartzberg’s article on planning awareness common myths, click here.The post Planning awareness: Don’t fall victim to these common myths first appeared on Schwartzberg Law ..read more

Ora’s Legacy A Foreward by Ora Schwartzberg as featured in Stan Miller’s Your American Legacy I heard Stan speak at a WealthCounsel Symposium in Boston, in August of 2019. I had participated in other Symposium sessions and was quite satisfied with the subject matter content that earlier speakers were able to provide. Then there was Stan!…… I walked out of his presentation completely mesmerized. This was one of those times in my life that I was astonished by the importance of a “calling” that I wanted to pursue. I sat in the lobby of the hotel where the Symposium was given unable to think about ..read more

Although leaving your hard-earned assets outright to your children, grandchildren, or other beneficiaries after you die may seem like the easiest and most desired form of distribution, this scheme will make their inheritance easy prey for creditors, predators, and divorcing spouses. Instead, consider using discretionary trusts for the benefit of each of your beneficiaries. What is a Discretionary Trust? A discretionary trust is an irrevocable trust set up to protect the assets funded into it for the benefit of the trust’s beneficiary. This can mean protection from the beneficiary’s poor money ..read more