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Esign revocable living trust

hey so I'm Paul Rabelais and in this video we're going to talk about I'm not so well known secret to naming or titling your living trust okay so I'm Paul rambling I'm an estate planning attorney I help our clients get and keep their legal affairs in order and many people around the country they set up revocable living trusts because they want assets titled in the name of their trust when they die because assets in their trust they avoid that court-supervised an attorney involved probate or succession proceeding assets and a living trust don't go through that you name a successor trustee may be a child or adult children of yours who you will designate to be able to disperse the assets out of your trust to your trust beneficiaries when you die without any attorney in court in court involvement now when someone sets up that living trust there's always going to be a name or a title to the trust and then their assets at least the assets that would have to go through probate if they remain in your name when you die those get retitled or renamed into the name of your trust so let me give an example let's say Peter Finley and Claire Finley they set up their they want to set up a living trust to avoid probate and so they want to set up a revocable living trust which most people do if that's the goal to avoid probate is they want to be a revocable trust because they want to have the ability to change it amend it revoke it undo it they want to keep all of that control so they their attorney helps them prepare the trust and let's say they title it the Peter Finley and Claire Finley revocable living trust everybody knows it's revocable which is nice because if they do want to amend it or change it in the future it's real clear to everybody that they have the ability to do that because that word revocable is quite frankly in the title of the trust now what I'm going to introduce to you is maybe a concept where you shouldn't have that word revocable in the name of your trust and for a couple of reasons the big reason is the one I'm about to mention the the also important but maybe not as much not affecting as many people is a reason I'll give you later in this video so the idea here is sets in your revocable living trust are what's called countable resources for long-term care Medicaid which affects people if they have to go into a nursing home and it affects the middle class in fact 70 percent of people turning 65 today are going to need long-term care in the future and assets in your revocable living trust they all have to be consumed and spent you know sell it spend the money until you have less than $2,000 before you get assistance from your state's long-term care Medicaid program so at some point you know maybe it might be 10 years ago 10 years from now maybe it might be 20 years from now you may you may something may happen you may get sick your spouse may get sick whether that's dementia Alzheimer's arthritis or some disease that maybe isn't even that popular right now you might get sick and you might start draining all of your trust assets and then you may have a need to convert your revocable living trust to a different kind of trust that would protect those assets you know from having to be spent at the nursing home so when when that happens or if that happens in the future after setting up your revocable living trust if you had set up a trust with revocable living trust in the title you're gonna have to remove all those assets from that trust to set up a new trust and then put all those assets in the new trust and that's gonna be kind of a pain because you know you're gonna have lots of financial accounts and you're gonna have to set up all new financial accounts you're gonna have to get a lawyer to get your real estate that's in your revocable living trust take it out of your revocable living trust and then insert it in the new trust lots of transactions lots of complications just lots of difficulty where as or however if you had simply originally titled your revocable living trust instead of the Peter Finley and Claire family revocable living trust just title it the Peter Finley and Claire Finley living trust and then if you need to restate the terms of those trust in the future to to structure that trust in a way where your assets would be protected in case you had a long-term care nursing home stay you simply restate all of the terms of the trust but you keep the title the same you don't have to retitle any assets you don't have to take any assets out of the trust put them back in your name put them in a new trust that doesn't have a title you know revocable living trusts so from the beginning you just title your trust the Peter Finley and Claire Findlay living trusts sure if it's a revocable trust through out the trust instrument it will say this is a revocable trust this is a revocable trust this is a revocable trust Peter can refer can revoke it under these circumstances Claire can revoke it under these circumstances and all those you know that that revocable authority is listed in the trust terms but you just didn't put the word revocable in the title of the trust and so that makes it very easy to restate the trust if necessary in the future to any other type of trust that may be able to provide you with more protections that you'll need later in life without having to retitle anything okay so in fact I'm gonna I'm gonna link you to a video where I'll address kind of the long-term care medicaid component and and how trusts are affected by long-term care and Medicaid so you know feel free to take a look at that as well all right now I mentioned there might be another reason why people may want may not want to just have the word revocable in their live in the title of their trust so up until now I've said Peter and Claire instead of titling their trust the Peter Finley and Claire family revocable living trusts which makes it really difficult to shift those assets from that revocable trust to some other arrangement that might qualify them for a long term or Medicaid and might you know that that Restatement may very well start that you know five year look-back period that people often want to start to make themselves eligible for Medicaid there's another issue that issue that I've just talked about that's a middle class issue you know if there's somebody with with five million dollars they're not worried about qualifying for Medicaid in the future because they know they have enough money to cover whatever long-term care they may need may have long-term care insurance they may have decided just to self-insure that expense and they have enough money to do it so those you know wealthy folks they're not concerned about having to restate their revocable living trusts to qualify for Medicaid however they may very well be concerned they they're more likely a target of a lawsuit and assets that you have in your revocable living trust you know the lawyers when they see that you have assets titled in your revocable living trust if you're a target for a lawsuit the lawyers are going to start salivating because they know that the assets in your revocable living trust their you know your your creditors can can take those assets away from you when they're in your revocable living trust so so why why title you know your trust the Peter Finley and Claire family revocable living trust and just let the world know that those those assets are you know up for grabs for your creditors so again because in the future not for nursing home purposes but maybe more for credit or protection lawsuit protection purposes maybe in the future you may find it in your best interest to restate all of the terms of your current revocable living trust to structure them in a way where it's harder for creditors and their lawyers to get at those assets again if that name revocable is in your title you'd have to take all your assets out of your trust and then form a whole new trust without the word revocable in the title so again you can just if it's the Peter family and Claire family living trust you can restate the terms of it without titling anything okay so wanted to give you that now now look make sure that you hit the subscribe button and the notification belt make sure you do that that way you won't miss anything also tune in 10 a.m. Central Time every every morning quite frankly seven days a week I've been doing this and then smash that thumbs up button if you found it helpful 10:00 a.m. central time every morning more estate planning information as long as I'm getting the likes and the really good comments and the subscriptions if you've already subscribed thanks but if as long as I see those subscription numbers grow I'm gonna keep plugging at it you guys are motivating me to educate educate educate it's been a lot of fun alright so there you have it just one little kind of nugget there on how to name your living trust if you already have a trust and living trust and that word revocable is in the title I don't know that there's a whole lot you can do you know absence starting all over again if you already have assets titled in the name and in the title it says a revocable living trust but if you're considering forming a revocable living trust to avoid probate then you may want to suggest whoever is helping you hey let's let's keep the word revocable out of the title of our living trust yeah well put it in the terms of our trust instrument but I want to be able to have the flexibility to restate my trust in the future that may not be fully revocable because I may need other protections in the future that I don't really think that I need right now so anyway there you have it hope that helps we'll see you tomorrow