South Carolina Estate Planning / Litigation Laws

There are three major benefits to having a revocable living trust.

First Benefit

The first is control. While you are alive your trust is easily changed by you so that if you have another child, if you become– if your business becomes very successful, you can always change it to, to change the way that your property and your assets are distributed.

Second Benefit

The second benefit of a revocable living trust is that it’s a private document. When property or assets are being held in trust, nobody outside of your family and your friends that benefit from the trust have to know about it. If you die with a will, it is a public document. It’s going to go down to the probate court and everybody in your city, town, or county is going to be able to see it. If you die with a trust, only the beneficiaries of the trust will know exactly what property and assets are in the trust.

Third Benefit

The third benefit of having a revocable living trust is that it helps to ensure that the assets and property in the trust remain protected from creditors. A simple example of that is that if you inherited $500,000 through a will and you deposit it into your bank account, if you were leaving to go to the grocery store an hour later and you hit somebody in the car, they could actually sue you and take that $500,000 away from you. If you put that money in a trust and you hit somebody in a car, they would have a much more difficult time taking that money away. So putting your assets in trusts to ensure that your family and your friends are protected.

By: Peter Nosal

One of the first questions that we ask clients when we sit down for initial consultation is, what exactly is your net worth? Essentially, your net worth is what would happen if you had a giant sale, sold all of your property, liquidated all your securities, and emptied out all of your bank accounts. We would take all of that cash, add it up, and that is your net worth.

By: Peter Nosal