What is joint living trust?
A joint revocable living trust is a trust that is set up by two people (joint grantors) and funded with joint or separate property.
When to use a joint trust or joint living trust?
So it may make sense for the couple to consider a joint living trust instead. Depending on how the estate plan is written, it may still be possible to utilize a marital trust for a portion of the assets after the first spouse dies.
Can a married couple draft a joint revocable trust?
(For married couples only) Even if your estate is subject to estate tax, recent IRS Private Letter Rulings indicate that we can draft JRT’s to more easily avoid estate tax results than with separate trusts. With separate trusts, you have to decide how much property to allocate to each spouse, and you may have to guess who will die first.
Can a joint trust be set up to avoid probate?
When you’re considering setting up a trust to avoid probate, you’ll be “sold” a living revocable trust. A married couple can have individual trusts or joint trusts. Joint trusts will have only one physical trust document.
Which is the easiest form of living revocable trust?
However, a single document could be used to describe two separate trusts. A joint revocable trust is probably the easiest form of living revocable trusts for a married couple to use. A joint revocable trust merges the estate planning of a couple using a single trust document.
Can a joint living trust be divided into two trusts?
If the joint trust is set up to take advantage of the marital deduction and the exemption equivalent (estate tax laws), then the joint living trust will have to divide itself into two trusts – a marital trust and a shelter trust – after the death of the first spouse.
Which is better joint trust or joint estate plan?
The Joint Trust. Typically, when a married couple utilizes a Revocable Living Trust based estate plan, each spouse creates and funds his or her own separate Revocable Living Trust. This results in two trusts. However, in the right circumstances, a married couple may be better served by creating a single Joint Trust.
Which is the best joint revocable living trust?
Joint revocable living trusts are more difficult to “manage” after the death of the first spouse to die.
When to transfer property to a joint revocable trust?
The IRS has ruled that where spouses transferred property to a joint revocable trust and retained life income interests, with remainder to charity, the gift to the charity was complete at the death of the first spouse when the trust became irrevocable.