The Living Trust Advisor

Pregame Warm-Up Or, Read This Before You Read This Book

If this book is in your hands, you are probably thinking about putting together a Living Trust, which is the primary tool in the United States for the transfer of your assets after the deaths of both you and your spouse to your children, grandchildren, or other heirs. Or perhaps you already have your Living Trust, which has collected dust on your bookshelf or in your safe-deposit box, and you somehow have been prompted into revisiting it.

For a combined 70 years, my late father, teacher, and mentor, Gerald Condon, and I set up thousands of Living Trusts for our clients. After all those years of advising clients on their inheritance instructions, I am left with this one conclusion: You really don’t know much about the Living Trust . . . or how it works . . . or what it should say or do . . . even if you have one!

Actually, perhaps that assessment is too broad to be of practical use. I do tend to speak in sweeping generalizations. Let me be more specific by lumping you into one of four categories of Living Trust clients:

1. You do not have a Living Trust, and you don’t really know much about the Living Trust other than it is some kind of inheritance document.
2. You already have a Living Trust, but you have no real or meaningful understanding of what it is or how it works beyond the basic function of transferring your assets to your children after your death without probate. In other words, you just signed it where your attorney ...