It’ll be time to go back to school soon, and, while you’re buying pencils, notepads, and books, you should also consider giving your children something more long-lasting than a shopping cart full of school supplies: a trust fund.

What is a Trust Fund?

A trust fund is a legal construct that holds property (money, land, possessions, etc.) for another person. The state legislature controls the trust, and some states allow for perpetual trusts, which last forever. There is often a “spendthrift” clause in the trust that prevents the grantor from using the fund’s money for their own gain.

There are three main parties to know when it comes to trust funds: the grantor, grantee, and trustee. The grantor establishes and donates the property to the fund. The grantee is the beneficiary of the fund, and the trustee is in charge of managing it.

Aren’t They Just for Rich People?

Trust funds have been mischaracterized. People think of the “trust fund babies” from movies: the blond, rich kids who always end up being the villain. However, kids who receive trust funds do not often fit this stereotype, and the benefits of trust funds don’t include being able to stick it to the other kids at a summer camp in an ‘80s movie. There are a lot of important advantages to trust funds that help kids have a bright future.

The Benefits of Trust Funds

Trust funds hold property until you feel that your child is ready to handle the responsibility. As you can imagine, teenagers and college kids aren’t exactly paragons of financial stability. By putting money away in a trust fund, parents know that their kids won’t end up in dire straits if worst comes to worst.

Trust funds have tax benefits as well, particularly when it comes to estate tax savings. They also protect assets from the beneficiaries themselves, if you don’t feel that they are responsible. For example, you can leave the profits of your business to your children, without the children being able to control the business. Trust funds are also great options for grandparents seeking to help their grandchildren pay for their education or other expenses, long after the grandparents are gone.

There are many different types of trusts, all of which have different specifications, but, as you can see, the phrase “trust fund baby” is misleading. They’re not just for rich people. They’re for anybody who wants to plan for a bright future for their children or grandchildren.

If you would like more information on how Wild, Felice and Partners, P.A can help with protecting your asset, providing plan for your family and building your estate plan,  please call 954-944-2855 or visit us today at www.WFPLaw.com.

Remember when you were young and believed in the tooth fairy? You’d put your newly-lost tooth under your pillow and, when you woke up, there was a little bit of money in its place. National Tooth Fairy Day is coming up on August 22nd, and trust us when we say that giving a mythical creature part of your body for unknown reasons in exchange for a small amount of money is preferable to probate court. Probate court takes way more than the tooth fairy, and its process is far more complex than switching out a tooth for some cash.

What is Probate?

Probate is the process in which someone’s assets and debts are disbursed after his or her death. Probate court supervises this procedure. If you die intestate (without an estate plan), your state’s law takes over and governs what happens with your assets.

Why You Need an Estate Plan

Contrary to popular belief, the state doesn’t get everything you own if you die intestate. This only happens when someone has no relatives. If the person in charge of managing your estate digs up some long-lost relative you didn’t know you had, then the state won’t get your money. However, you don’t want to leave the state with the ability to pawn off your possessions onto whomever. This is where an estate plan comes in.

Probate can also take time. The state mandates a period for creditors to file claims. Usually, the process is wrapped up within a year. But, sometimes, the process can drag on for much longer if there are family fights or disputes over property. If your family is like every other family in the world, then you know that there are always relatives who will make things way more difficult than they need to be. Dying intestate opens the floor to lengthy, drawn-out disputes, causing probate to drag on and on.

What All This Costs

Probate is also costly. When you die with no estate plan, the probate court itself oversees the process and appoints an attorney to handle your affairs. The fees for this take money away from your estate, and the administrator isn’t always someone you would have picked had you made a will.

If you have no estate plan, navigating the probate process is exhausting and annoying. Creating an estate plan and keeping it current will help your loved ones have peace of mind and wrap up your estate quickly and efficiently after you die.

If you would like more information on how Wild, Felice and Partners, P.A can help with protecting your asset, providing plan for your family and building your estate plan,  please call 954-944-2855 or visit us today at www.WFPLaw.com.

Wedding season is upon us, and once you’ve planned the big day, gotten all dressed up, cut the cake, and gone on the honeymoon, it’s time to talk about something far less exciting: death.

While not exactly the most romantic way to spend time with your spouse, it’s necessary to update or create a new estate plan after you marry him or her. Estate planning isn’t too difficult, and, if you and your spouse can get through planning an entire wedding successfully, you can get this done easily. While discussing your death isn’t as much fun as trying out different wedding cakes, you’ll be grateful you did.

Why Involve Your Spouse in Your Estate Plan?

Marriage is a huge life change, and people may assume that, if they die, their stuff will automatically go to their spouse. Sometimes that’s true, but, often, it is not. It’s best to write a will that will expressly lay out where you want your assets to go after death. Pets, children, possessions, land: all of this needs to be sorted.

Marital v. Separate Property

There are two types of property to consider when planning your estate, as well as three documents. Separate and marital property differ based on ownership. Separate property is property acquired prior to marriage. Your spouse has no ownership rights to it. This category also includes property that you two agreed was separate in a prenuptial agreement, as well as gifts given specifically to you.

Marital property, by contrast, is jointly owned. Property that was purchased using the income of either spouse, property given to both people, income or assets earned, and other similar entities are considered “marital property.”

What’s in an Estate Plan?

When you know the different types of property, you can better formulate and structure your estate plans. An estate plan should include a last will and testament, health care surrogate, and durable power of attorney. For more information on these categories, see here.

In addition to the day-to-day decisions you and your spouse will make together, you also need to focus on the big ones, particularly when estate planning. Decisions include who will be the guardian of your children, who will take care of your pets, which gifts you want to bequeath, whether you want to make property jointly-owned, and more.

While you will still probably make individual estate plans, you should also incorporate one another into your own plan. You’ve walked down the aisle with each other, now it’s time to walk into an attorney’s office and plan your estate.

If you would like more information on how Wild, Felice and Partners, P.A can help with protecting your asset, providing plan for your family and building your estate plan,  please call 954-944-2855 or visit us today at www.WFPLaw.com.

Summer is about to end.  Classes are about to start and stores are crowded with parents trying to get the best deals on school supplies.  Florida has many benefits, like inexpensive college tuition for in-state residents, warm weather all year round and access to theme parks, like Disney and Universal Studios.  However, there is also another benefit of living in Florida—the homestead protection provided by the Florida Constitution.

The overall purpose of the homestead exemption is to protect the family by protecting a family’s shelter from being attacked by creditors. In this regard, the Florida Constitution protects homesteads in three specific ways: (1) it provides a homestead with an exemption from taxes; (2) it protects homesteads from forced sale by creditors; and (3) it delineates the restrictions a homestead owner faces when attempting to alienate or devise the homestead property. Also, homestead prevents loved ones from having to go through the lengthy and expensive process of probate because the homestead is passed directly to the designated heir.

Be that as it may, homestead creates interesting circumstances with regards to probate. When a property owner dies, there are restrictions on how the property can be transferred to the family.

Who gets the property will often rely on who survives the decedent. If a spouse or minor child survives the owner of a homestead property, the homestead may not be devised.  If there is no minor child, the surviving spouse gets the property. However, the property owner may not give less than a fee simple interest to the surviving spouse.  If a spouse and lineal descendants survive the decedent, the surviving spouse takes a life estate in the homestead with a vested remainder to the lineal descendants in being at the time of the decedent’s death, per stirpes.

Ultimately, homestead laws trump any clauses in a will or trust.  If a spouse or lineal descendant survives a decedent, the descendant cannot devise the property to anyone in a will or trust.  Therefore, it is important to understand how homestead property could affect your overall estate plan.

For more information on Estate Planning, Asset Protection, and Probate administration visit our website at www.wfplaw.com

It’s A Wild World. Are Your Protected?

What Digital Assets to Include in Your Estate Plan

The “digital asset” is a fairly new concept that has not been incorporated into estate planning until
recent years; therefore, many have failed to even take their digital presence into consideration when
planning their estates. As we discovered last week (See “The Benefits of Preserving Your Digital Legacy”), if you have a digital existence, it is in your best interest to incorporate such disposition with the rest of your
assets.

In determining what digital assets you should include in your estate plan, it is first important to understand
exactly what assets we are referring to. Digital assets include all online accounts (profiles) and digital files
that you own (see “Digital Asset Inventory,” below). As a starting point, it may be helpful to determine
and separate accounts in terms of their monetary and sentimental values, as you will likely want to plan for
the disposition of both types.

Monetary Digital Assets: You may want to leave specific instructions for the monetary accounts,
including the account information, and how you want the account to be closed or maintained. Because of
the safety concerns associated with such accounts, you should be cautious with how you record the
information. For example, you may not want to include all of the usernames and passwords onto one
document, as it could be detrimental if it falls into the wrong hands. Therefore, you may want to consider
putting usernames on a separate document than passwords, and can be stored at different locations or with
different family members. On that same note, there are many afterlife management companies that store all
of this information for you. This presents the same concern that all of the information could be exposed, in
the event that the security system is breached.

Sentimental Digital Assets: With sentimental accounts, your main concern will be minimizing the hassle
associated with loved one’s accessing your accounts. As explained in “The Social Networker’s Asset
Protection Guide” (above), each account has different user agreements, which will effect how you instruct
their disposition. Therefore, it is important to read the user agreements for each account, to ensure that your instructional provisions are consistent with what you have legally agreed to. Also, don’t forget to include those files that you have on your computer, phone, a zip drive, or on a “cloud.” Be certain to include these digital assets in your estate plan, as failure to do so can lead to problems arising from terms of service
agreements, privacy, and rights of beneficiaries.

Now that you have determined your digital assets, it is all about legacy, privacy, & security planning.
Go through each item on your list, and decide which type of planning it falls under. Additionally,
consider who you would want to appoint to take care of the management and distribution of your
digital assets. This will help your attorney draft the appropriate provisions that will preserve and
protect your digital afterlife.

Digital Asset Inventory

Q: What Digital Assets Do You Own?

Consider the following digital assets as a prompt in creating your own digital inventory:
▪ Email accounts
▪ Social networking accounts
o Facebook
o Instagram
o Twitter
o LinkedIn
▪ Blogs
o WordPress
o Blogger
▪ Domain names
o GoDaddy
▪ Online subscriptions
▪ Pictures and Videos
o Flickr
o Kodak Easyshare
o YouTube
▪ Virtual Businesses
o Ebay businesses/seller accounts
▪ Online payment accounts
o Bank Accounts
o Shopping accounts (Amazon, Ebay, Paypal)
o Bill accounts
▪ Computer Games – Avatars
o World of Warcraft
o Second Life
▪ Any personal files on a:
o Computer
o “Cloud” (online hard-drive)
o Zip drive
o Phone

The Benefits of Preserving Your Digital Legacy

Take a moment to consider the wide array of online profiles and accounts that are floating around cyber space; bearing your name, personal information, communications, blogs, stored files, and so on. What happens to our online identities when we are gone? Who will receive access to your email, blog, and social media accounts? In South Florida, social media & digital assets are all encompassing in our daily lives. Whether it is for work, school, home, or purely social purposes, our digital assets are incredibly valuable, & should be considered with the rest of our assets when planning our estates. By incorporating your digital assets into your estate plan; you can achieve the following benefits:

▪ Control over how your accounts are closed & preserved.

▪ Control over choosing someone you trust to be an online executor, & follow your wishes regarding the disposal or care of your digital assets.

▪ Privacy – preventing the wrong person from accessing your private information.

▪ Ensuring that your fiduciaries discover all the vital account information when the need arises

▪ Prevention of identity theft – if no one has knowledge or access to your accounts, there is a higher probability that identity theft will go unnoticed.

▪ Easy discovery of electronic bills and similar accounts, to avoid late fees & cancellations that will create losses for the estate.

▪ Preserving your story – allowing family members to access your blog, photos, and other digital assets that keep your memory and story alive.

While many may advise you to simply incorporate your digital asset wishes into your will, doing so can be problematic when it comes to privacy. When a will is admitted to probate, its contents become public record. Thus, any private digital asset information you place in your will, such as usernames and passwords, are exposed to the public. As an alternative, said information can be placed in a separate document that is referenced in the will; or better yet, placed into a trust. This way, your social media identity remains private, and you can receive all of the same benefits mentioned above.