The Living Trust Advisor

CHAPTER 5 Who Should You Select as the Lifetime Agent of Your Living Trust? Or, If You Become Incapacitated, Will Your Lifetime Agent Manage Your Living Trust for Your Benefit . . . or for His?

A longer life is one of the blessings of our times. However, a longer life capacity brings with it the likelihood—perhaps a near certainty—that one’s spouse will become severely injured, incapacitated, or unable to make clear mental decisions before the death of the other spouse.

Financial Advisor Alert

As you are likely aware, many of your married clients’ financial and investment decisions are made by the “Man of the House” with the wife knowing nothing about the family finances other than writing checks for daily household expenses. You have to prevail upon that husband to ensure that before he dies, he must set up the proper support system for his wife to protect her from her own financial naïvete—and from those willing to capitalize on an easy mark. And that support system includes a Living Trust in which a trusted third party is appointed as her Living Trust asset manager (whom I refer to in this chapter as the Lifetime Agent) if the husband dies or becomes incapacitated to the extent he can no longer tend to financial matters.

Sound sexist? Yes. But for a couple that includes a wife who may have never even met the CPA, setting up this plan is the most precious and loving gift that the husband can ever bestow upon her.

If you become physically, mentally, or emotionally incapacitated, ...