Law Offices of Lee L. Kaster

Do you have a beneficiary with a disability or for whatever reason they cannot manage money effectively? There is a way to provide for such a beneficiary while protecting the assets from predators, creditors and, in some cases, from the beneficiary themself. It involves leaving assets to someone in trust as opposed to outright. It can preserve valuable public benefits like Medi-Cal and SSI for a disabled beneficiary and ensure proper management of the funds by a trustee. There are better options than leaving the money to another relative with an informal promise to use the money for the beneficiary. Of course, the relative is under no legal obligation to use the money for the benefit of the beneficiary.

Do you have a minor child? Although it's ultimately up to the judge who should be the guardian of the child if you are not around (based on the best interests of the child), you can designate your choice in writing and the judge will most likely give your choice a lot of weight.

Why sign a will or a trust? One reason is to control the disposition of your property on your death. You may want to control who is to receive your assets on your death and how they are to receive it. If you have no will or trust, the State of California has come up with how they think most people probably would want their estate distributed, but that may not be what you want.

One of the most basic reasons to have a will or trust -- you get to control who receives your estate and can place restrictions on the gifts (like leaving money in trust for someone as opposed to outright). If you don't do this, the State of California will control who receives your estate, which may or may not be whom you would choose.

To follow up on my last post (I can't believe it's been almost a year!), it is common for an elderly person to want to add a child to a bank account so that the child can pay bills and monitor the account. What a lot of people don't realize, however, is that to do this, a lot of banks require that the child be added as a joint account holder which means when the parent dies, BY LAW THE MONEY IN THE ACCOUNT BELONGS TO THE CHILD WHO IS ON THE ACCOUNT. This can lead to an uncomf...ortable situation for the child on the account if there are other children or worse, a conflict among the children. In a lot of cases, the better way to deal with this situation is for the parent to sign a power of attorney with the bank naming the child as their "attorney in fact" (agent) for that account. That way the child can still pay bills and get account statements but there is no "right of survivorship" like there is with a joint account. Or the parent can set up a trust and add the child as a co-trustee which would also give the child the power to manage the account. See more