Last week I met with a couple from Metairie who were setting up a Louisiana Revocable Living Trust To avoid Probate. In addition to their primary goal of avoiding probate, they wanted to provide for their daughter’s retirement and they wanted to make sure that what ever was left to their daughter did not end up in the hands of their son-in-law. To accomplish these secondary goals we created what is known as a Children’s Inheritance Trust.

When you establish a Children’s Inheritance Trust as part of your estate plan you are creating a separate trust in addition to your will, Revocable Living Trust, and/or Irrevocable Living Trust. Assets from your estate will typically go into this separate Children’s Inheritance Trust after both you and your spouse have passed. There are many benefits to establishing these Children’s Inheritance Trusts. When assets are left to a Children’s Inheritance Trust, your children will have full access and control over the funds in trust when you are gone; their is a clear distinction between your child’s separate assets and their marital assets; and you decide where the assets that remain in your child’s trust will go once your child passes. This serves to keep assets in the family and prevent your child from leaving the assets left in trust to their spouses.

While the typical Children’s Inheritance Trust doesn’t get funded with assets until after you pass, you can chose to donate assets into your child’s trust prior to your death. The couple last week decided this would be helpful for their daughter as a way to create a retirement account for her. The couple will move funds into their daughter’s trust yearly, and at age 60 the daughter can begin managing and using those funds even if her parents are still alive. In this way, we were able to use some creativity by utilizing a Louisiana Children’s Inheritance Trust to provide for the child’s retirement even before death.

If you have concerns about when and how your children will inherit asserts from you and you want to figure out creative yet simple solutions to accomplish your Louisiana Estate Planning goals, call (504) 274-1980 in the Metairie and New Orleans Area or call (985) 246-3020 in Mandeville, Covington, Slidell, Houma, Thibodaux, and surrounding areas.