When Parents Plan Ahead, the Children Win

By Timothy Barrett, Senior Vice President

Consult the Experts: Financial Edition runs in Louisville Business First

Our clients ask us most often how to protect the wealth they have earned from their own children’s poor planning or misfortune. We recommend a Trust to protect family wealth from bankruptcy, divorce settlements, injury lawsuits, creditor claims, untutored investment choices, overspending and unnecessary taxation. These are protections your children cannot easily obtain for themselves. But you can provide them all in your estate plan.

Your Trust can allow them to share a vacation home, manage a family business as it passes to each new generation, care for a special needs child without losing Medicaid and other public assistance, and even divide up inherited retirement plans and IRA’s.

You can provide these advantages through a third-party trust with a professional Trustee. The Trustee can preserve wealth, make reasonable and appropriate investment choices, and assist the family in planning thoughtful distributions to sustain reasonable lifestyles. As the beneficiaries mature, they can acquire control over specific trust assets, such as the family business, without losing these valuable protections.

Show this article to your estate planning attorney and call us to learn how to empower your children and protect your legacy.