Hello, I’m Christopher Lavin, an attorney with the Laven Law Group. We are an elder law firm certified in what we do in Lebanon, Ohio. Now, elder law is everything from traditional estate planning to long-term care planning. But let’s talk a little bit more on the traditional planning side and what you hear of wills, trusts, and probate.
So trusts are becoming pretty typical for middle America. We don’t use them the same way as the Kennedys, but we’ve finally figured out what they do and don’t do for us. What’s confusing is there’s as many types of trusts as cars in a parking lot. You can almost have a trust for anything you want. So you’re going to hear the terminology ‘revocable trust’ and you’re going to hear the terminology ‘irrevocable trust’.
So, let’s start with the basics. For any trust for any reason, I always visualize a trust like a place to hold something, like a box sitting on the table here. Now, some boxes have a lid on it, and that makes it irrevocable. Some boxes do not have a lid on it, and that makes it revocable. When you talk to your advisors about revocable trust planning, you’ll talk about probate avoidance, minimizing taxes, and controlling distribution to the children. And that’s very important. And revocable, again, means no limitations, no lid on the box. Irrevocable does put a limitation on you, and that limitation is designed to protect you from long-term care and nursing home spend-down. The word ‘irrevocable’ is intimidating because it’s a big word that means you cannot do something, but it’s really advanced over the years and become more flexible by nature and it is livable. But revocable does not protect you from long-term care planning; irrevocable trusts do.