Just yesterday, I encountered an issue that comes up time and time again when banks don’t understand the tax treatment of trusts where you retain income. A client in Mandeville who set up an irrevocable trust to protect assets from Nursing Home Poverty was getting pushback from their bank when trying to open a bank account in the name of their new trust. The bank was insistent that because the trust was an irrevocable trust it needed to use a separate EIN or Tax ID Number.The bank did not realize that whether the trust is irrevocable or not makes no [...]

If you own rental property here in Louisiana or you have friends with rental properties, you have probably heard that LLCs are a good way to protect you from lawsuits, but the question is why and how? I was talking with a former client from Metairie yesterday, and after setting up multiple LLCs for his multiple rental properties, he told me how few of his colleagues understand how Louisiana LLCs work to protect rental properties.The client told me that he sees so many people setting up just one LLC and lumping all of their rentals into a single LLC thinking [...]

Earlier in the week I met with a lady in Mandeville who posed the question, “If both my husband’s and my names are on all of our accounts, why do we need power of attorney for one another?” Well, the answer may surprise you.Louisiana Power of Attorney covers a whole lot more than the ability to perform banking and financial transactions for one another. If a loved one becomes incapacitated without a Power of Attorney in place, you will be unable to perform a number of vital functions for that loved one and will be forced to go through a [...]

Today I met with a couple from Destrehan whose biggest estate planning concern is to make everything as simple as possible for their family when each spouse passes away. Their primary assets are their home, a modest investment account worth about $150,000, and an partial interest in some rental properties in Jefferson Parish. In our discussion, we talked about the court supervised probate process that is required for all Louisiana residents that die with real estate and investments titled in their names, regardless of whether they have a Louisiana Will in place or not.As we discussed, two probates would be [...]

The other day I met with a lady from Raceland to help her set up a Louisiana Estate Plan that would protect her real estate, investments, and savings from being spent down on the cost of Long-Term Care. We are setting up a trust for the family that will hold ownership of the aforementioned assets, so that those assets won’t count against her eligibility to receive Medicaid to pay for long-term care should she need to enter a nursing home in the future. When Medicaid pays for long-term care, you are not forced to spend your own assets on the [...]

Whenever I set up Living Trusts for clients seeking to avoid probate they always want to know whether their burial plot should be in the trust. The simple answer is no. Burial plots are not like traditional real estate which always passes through a court supervised probate after death. When you purchase a burial plot, you do not actually own the land, the cemetery still holds title to the land. As a result, your burial plot is not technically a part of your estate.To find out about the disposition of your burial plot upon death, you should always check with [...]

Two times in the past month, I have dealt with clients who waited until the last minute to get their affairs in order, and now both situations are more complicated and costly than they needed to be. In one instance, a wife from Mandeville came to me to assist her in setting up a trust for her and her husband to avoid probate. Her husband was already in declining health, and it was a scenario where he could pass any day. Despite our best efforts to get the trust complete prior to the husband’s passing, he died the day before [...]

Yesterday, I met with a couple from Harvey who had worked for 35 years to build up a successful family business. One of their major Estate goals is to allow their daughter, who is currently involved in the day-to-day operations of the business, to continue running the business after both spouses pass. They want their daughter to have full discretion regarding the direction of the business, and they want her to be free from dealing with outside influences. They don’t want lawyers, judges, or their other children preventing the daughter from carrying on the family business.To accomplish this goal we [...]

This week I met with a woman from Metairie who already had a living trust in place. She created A Louisiana Revocable Living Trust with another attorney two years ago after completing a court supervised succession for her deceased husband. She established the Trust with the intention of avoiding a second succession for her kids after she passed away.However, she wasn’t sure the trust was done right, so she came to me for a second opinion. And I am glad she did. Upon reviewing the trust, we determined that the beneficiaries were not listed the way she wanted, and we [...]

Yesterday I met with a client from Mandeville who is upgrading from a basic will to a revocable living trust so that her kids can avoid the expense, delay, and stress that comes with going through a court supervised Louisiana Succession. In our discussion, she expressed to me that she was worried that one of her daughters would one day get divorced from her husband, citing recurring marital problems. The client wanted to make sure that any inheritance her daughter receives in the future would not become involved in a future divorce. To address this concern, we decided to set [...]