The revocable living trust is a widely utilized estate planning device. When you hear about the advantages that these trusts can provide, you may come to the conclusion that you may want to use a living trust instead of a last will.
You have more flexibility when you use a revocable living trust, because you can stipulate terms when you create the trust agreement. Because of this, you can leave instructions that the trustee must follow, and you have the ability to allow for partial distributions on a long-term basis.
While you are living, you continue to control the trust, so you still have access to the resources. You even have the power to revoke the trust if this is your choice.
If you were to use a will instead of a trust, the will would be admitted to probate after your passing. This is a legal process that provides oversight, but it can be time-consuming and expensive. When a living trust has been established, the trustee can distribute assets in a timely and efficient manner outside of probate.
Termination of Living Trust
Now that we have provided some information about why you may want to create a living trust, we can look at the question that serves as the title of this blog post. In a very real sense, a living trust would terminate whenever you decide that it will terminate.
As we mentioned previously, you could instruct the trustee to distribute limited resources over an extended period of time, so that your beneficiaries cannot burn through their inheritances too quickly. Under these circumstances, you can have the trust terminate whenever the funds have been exhausted.
Another option would be to allow the trustee to distribute a lump sum to the beneficiary when a certain age threshold is reached. Under this scenario, the trust would terminate at that point.
If the trustee is instructed to distribute all of the resources in the trust immediately after your passing, the trust would terminate when all of the trust administration tasks were completed.
Free Living Trust Report
We have provided a basic overview in this blog post, but we have a more comprehensive resource that is available to you free of charge if you would like to learn more about living trusts.
Our firm has prepared a series of special reports that cover many different estate planning and elder law topics. The report on revocable living trusts is very informative, and you will gain a great deal of useful information if you download your copy.
To get your copy of the free special report, click this link and follow the simple instructions: Hartford Connecticut Living Trusts.
Mr. Nirenstein is licensed to practice before the courts of the State of Connecticut and the United States District Court. He is a member of the Connecticut and Hartford County Bar Associations, and the Estate and Probate, Elder Law, Business Law and Real Estate Sections of the Connecticut Bar Association.
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