Whether you are just not starting the estate planning process or feel like you have completed your estate plan, you should keep all your estate planning documents together in one place. This will make it easier when you meet with an attorney to begin your estate plan, and it will help your family distribute your estate after you have passed away.

The documents you should keep together are your will, trust, power of attorney, medical directives, life insurance policies, investment account statements, and safety deposit box information.

If you have a will, make sure to have a copy of it, as well as copies of codicils and any previous versions of your will. If an attorney helped draft your will, have the attorney’s name and law firm information easily available as well. Keep the original will in a safe deposit box.

If you have a trust, make sure to have a copy of the Trust Agreement. Keep the original Trust Agreement in a safe deposit box with your will. If there are any bank accounts of pieces of property associated with the trust, keep their statements and deeds near your copy of the Trust Agreement. You should also have the contact information of the attorney who helped create and fund the trust.

If you have a power of attorney, have the original and a copy of the document readily available.

Let your attorney or a trusted family member know the location of your safety deposit box, and also tell them where the keys are.

The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in wills, trusts, estate planning, and asset protection. If you have any questions about creating a Trust, Will, or estate planning in general, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

It is very common for individuals to want to leave a legacy to their favorite charity. Gifts to charities can be worked into any estate plan, and will be tremendously appreciated. However, if an estate plan is not properly structured, it can create a lot of stress and expense for the beneficiaries. Large fees and taxes can be avoided with proper estate planning.

There are many different options and estate planning tools to make charitable gifts. What works best for you will depend on your goals and estate.

One option is a charitable lead trust. This type of trust is called a charitable lead trust because the charity gets funds immediately, and the principal of the trust ultimately comes back to the donor or donor’s family. A charitable lead trust pays income to your chosen charity for a specified number of years after your death (or before your death if you wish). When that period is up, the trust principal passes to your family members or other heirs without any estate or gift tax consequences.

Another option is a charitable remainder trust, which works in the opposite way of a charitable lead trust. This trust will give your family member beneficiary or other heirs a lifetime stream of income, but when they die, the charity of your choosing will get any remainder.

You can also name your chosen charity as a beneficiary of an IRA or other employer-sponsored retirement plan. The charitable gift will be deductible for estate tax purposes, and the charity will not have to pay income tax on the funds it receives.

You can also establish a private foundation or donor advised fund. A private foundation offers you the considerable freedom to control distributions by placing restrictions on how your gifts are used by charities. A donor advised fund will allow you to maximize your income tax savings on your regular monthly or weekly contributions to church or charities. This is a favorite legacy tool for many wealthier clients because their children can operate the foundation and make donations to causes that their parents favored.

The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in wills, trusts, estate planning, and asset protection. If you have any questions about charitable gifts or foundations, or creating a Trust, Will, or estate planning in general, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

The parents of children with special needs have unique estate planning concerns. They have oftentimes been the full caregivers for their children, and want to ensure someone will be there when they pass. They also do not want their children to potentially lose any government benefits they receive, like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Medicaid, because health care costs can be massive, and the special needs child often lacks the ability to support himself or herself.

There are several types of estate planning tools tailored to address these unique planning challenges. The two most often used are Support Trusts and Special Needs Trusts.

With a Support Trust, the Trustee makes distributions for a child’s support. The assets of a Support Trust can only be used for necessities such as shelter, food, medical care, clothing, and educational services. The beneficiary of a Support Trust is not eligible to receive additional financial assistance through SSI or Medicaid. Therefore, if a child relies on those benefits, a Support Trust is not the best estate planning tool.

A Special Needs Trust also makes distributions for a child’s support, but it’s special design allows the beneficiary to maintain eligibility for SSI and Medicaid. This makes a Special Needs Trust an extremely effective tool for looking after a child with a disability. The creator of a Special Needs Trusts can make it a stand-alone trust funded with separate assets or it can be a sub-trust in an existing trust.

Just as there are many options when it comes to taking care of a child with special needs, there are also different kinds of Special Needs Trusts. One type of Special Needs Trust is a Third-Party Special Needs Trust, which is funded by a child’s parents’ as part of an estate plan. Another type of Special Needs Trust is a Self-Settled Special Needs Trust, which is usually funded with the child’s own assets from a lawsuit settlement.

Special Needs Trusts are a necessary estate planning tool for families caring for someone with a disability or special need. The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in wills, trusts, estate planning, and asset protection. If you have any questions about creating a Special Needs Trust, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

A testamentary trust is a trust that is established through and governed by a will. It becomes effective only after the grantor’s death. The grantor, also called a testator, is the person who drafted the will. A testamentary trust can be used to exert some control over how assets left in a will can be used after the grantor’s death. A will can set up more than one testamentary trust.

As with any Trust, from the time of the grantor’s death until the expiration of the testamentary trust, the beneficiaries may ask a Court to check to make sure the trust is being handled properly.

Generally, if a person’s estate is small compared to his or her potential life insurance proceeds or other proceeds that will be paid to the estate at death, a testamentary trust may be a good estate planning tool. However, testamentary trusts are not very popular because a living trust can accomplish most of the purposes of a testamentary trust while still giving the grantor some benefit during his lifetime.

A living trust, sometimes called an inter vivos trust (also referred to as a “revocable trust” or “family trust”), is a trust that is established during the lifetime of the grantor. At the grantor’s death, the assets pass to the trust beneficiaries. Living trusts are estate planning tools that are often used in combination with a will, with the goal of avoiding probate. Under Utah law, a living trust may be either revocable or irrevocable.

The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in Wills, Trusts, Estate planning, and Asset Protection. If you have any questions about creating a Trust, Will, or estate planning in general, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

You may have heard or even joked about Pet Trusts, but they are a real, enforceable part of estate planning. They may sound crazy at first, because simply asking a friend of family member to watch over your pets may seem sufficient. However, informal agreements concerning your pet’s care upon your death or incapacity are not enforceable and leave far too much to chance. A Pet Trust is a valid way to make sure your furry family members do not end up in the pound.

Utah law allows for “honorary trusts,” which can be set up for the care of any pet or other domestic animal, including horses, dogs, cats, and birds. When a Pet Trust is created, funds are set aside to provide for your animals’ on-going maintenance and care in the event of your incapacity or death. Like with any other trust, when creating a Pet Trust you appoint a trustee who will be in charge of managing those funds. The trustee may only use those specific funds to take care of your animals.

Through a pet trust, you can specifically designate how the funds should be used and invested, and you can outline what should be done with any remaining funds after the passing of your pets. For example, many people choose to leave the remainder to a charity. A Pet Trust terminates when no living animal is covered by the trust.

A Pet Trust is the only guaranteed way of making sure your animals will receive continued care when you are not capable of giving it to them. It is better than leaving money for your pet in a will because money left in a will can be contested by heirs during probate. A trust avoids this possibility entirely, giving you complete control over the designated assets.

The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We represent individuals and business owners and specialize in wills, trusts, estate planning, and asset protection. If you have any questions about estate planning, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

Asset protection is a means of keeping property safe from creditors. Creditors could be individuals or entities who win a lawsuit against you, or even those your insolvent business owes money to. Asset protection planning involves taking assets that are subject to creditors’ claims and recharacterizing them as assets that are out of the reach of creditors’ claims. Naturally, this is a murky area, so recharacterization must be done legally and as a preventative measure in order to avoid even more liability.

• Take Preventative Measures
  Start your asset protection planning before a claim arises. If you start moving assets after a claim arises, you risk making matters worse. What you do after a claim arises could be viewed as a fraudulent transfer and undone.
• Get Insurance
  Asset protection planning is not a substitute for insurance. You should include insurance as part of your asset protection plan as a supplement to help you defend potential fraudulent transfer claims.
• Place Personal Assets in Trusts and Business Assets in Business Entities
  When personal assets are placed into a business entity, the possibility of the entity being pierced by a creditor increases. Piercing an entity would allow creditors to reach through the entity and collect the owner’s personal assets. The place for personal assets is in a trust, out of the hands of business creditors.
• Do Not Gift Away Assets You are Trying to Protect
  If you put gifts in your will or trust for your children or other prospective heirs, keep in mind that if this was your idea of asset protection, such gifts can easily be set aside as fraudulent transfers.
• Offshore Accounts
  Despite what you may have read in every John Grisham novel, courts have the power to require debtors to bring money in offshore accounts back to the U.S. through repatriation orders. If a debtor does not comply with a repatriation order, a court may hold a debtor contempt, and in jail, until the money does come back.
• Bankruptcy
  In 2005, the bankruptcy laws changed. State homestead exemptions were limited, and other new provisions in the bankruptcy code case law make parts of asset protection plans difficult to protect in bankruptcy.
• Stay in the Legal Lines
  Asset protection planning should be based on the presumption that the planning and its purpose will become known to creditors. Asset protection plans that require secrecy will inevitably face problems.

The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in wills, trusts, estate planning, and asset protection. If you have any questions about asset protection or estate planning in general, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

Jimi Hendrix passed away in 1970, but litigation surrounding his estate continues to this very day. We try and give our clients an idea of how painful, expensive, and unending estate litigation can be, hoping this will motivate them to create or update their estate planning documents. For today’s motivation, here is a condensed view of the headache surrounding the Hendrix family estate planning feud.

When Jimi Hendrix died without a will, all of the rock star’s money went to his father, Al, according to intestacy laws. The brunt of the estate litigation has swirled around Al Hendrix’s will. Al left control of the estate to Janie Hendrix, her cousin Robert Hendrix, and some of Al Hendrix’s other children. Janie then started a multimillion-dollar company called Experience Hendrix. Mere days after Al’s death the family began fighting for control of the estate. Leon Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix’s brother, sought to overturn their father’s will and gain control of about a quarter of the $80 million estate. He accused Jimi’s stepsister of undertaking a scheme to disinherit Leon Hendrix and his children. The other side of the family claimed Leon Hendrix was unstable.

In 2002, a judge ruled that Leon Hendrix was not entitled to anything from his father’s will other than a single gold record left to him when his father died in 2002. The judge said that Al Hendrix cut Leon Hendrix from his will because of Leon’s struggle with drug addiction, and because he failed to complete a treatment program, is unwilling to work, and continuously demanded money.

The judge also found that Jimi’s stepsister, Janie, had breached her duties as trustee of the estate by not making payments to the 10 family members for whom trusts were created in Al Hendrix’s will. Janie and her cousin Robert Hendrix had to pay the lawyer’s fees for some of Al Hendrix’s other children who were suing along with Leon Hendrix. Janie retains control of the company, but she no longer has a say in how trust payments are disbursed to the rest of the family. The lawsuit cost millions of dollars that came from Al Hendrix’s estate.

A more recent court ruling involving Washington state’s publicity-rights law found a company called HendrixLicensing.com on the losing end of a battle with the Hendrix estate. The plot thickens, as the company is owned by a partnership that includes Leon, while the estate is controlled by Janie.

To avoid complicated ongoing estate litigation, work with an experienced estate planning attorney. The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in estate planning, asset protection, wills, and trusts. If you have any questions about estate planning, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

A trustee has a very important role. He or she will be in charge of distributing trust assets and managing trust property for the benefit of trust beneficiaries. If a trustee fails to meet these responsibilities, not only will the trustee hurt trust beneficiaries, but he can put himself in a precarious financial position. For example, in one case where the trustee reportedly acted in bad faith, he wound up paying some of the legal fees trust beneficiaries incurred.

The recent Utah case of Warner v. Warner entailed a 15-year long dispute between the trustees and the trust beneficiaries of a family trust. In the end, the Utah Court of Appeals held that the trustees were required to pay a portion of the beneficiaries’ attorney fees incurred in defending against the trustees’ appeal of the district court’s ruling. The trustees had to pay the fees from their own personal funds because they breached several fiduciary duties and made transfers in bad faith. The court, however, did limit the award to the actual fees the beneficiaries incurred as a result of the trustees’ bad faith conduct.

The Court also held that trustees cannot reimburse themselves from trust funds for the payment of their own attorney fees incurred in connection with their bad faith conduct. The Court held that trustees may only be reimbursed from trust funds when the trustees act in good faith. This was a good result, because the Trustees were not acting in good faith. This case highlights the need for selecting the right Trustee, and the need for Trustees to find good legal counsel.

The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in wills, trusts, estate planning, and asset protection. If you have any questions about trustee responsibilities, or if you have reservations about serving as a trustee, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

Once your estate plan is completed, we recommend that you revisit it on an annual basis just to make sure everything is squared away. Years fly by, and we easily forget to update our documents despite major family and financial changes. We recommend reviewing it with your attorney at least every five years. Your estate may even need updating more often if any of the below circumstances occur.

Changes in the Law
Under the current tax law, each individual may transfer up to $$5,340,000 tax-free during life or at death. If you have not revised your will or trust during the past 5 to 10 years, you may be missing out on this tax benefit. Also, if your estate planning was done when the exemption was much lower, your plan could be unnecessarily complicated.

Financial Success
If you have experienced the benefits of a promising investment, are selling a business, or expecting a successful initial public offering of your company, this could affect your estate planning. You can shift some of the potential monetary benefits of your success to your family and loved ones.

Financial Setbacks
Just as you would update your estate plan when expecting or experiencing financial gains, you should revisit and restructure it when experiencing financial setback.

Change in Relationships
A marriage or divorce is probably the biggest reason to update your will, living trust, any assets that pass outside of these documents. Likewise, if your spouse passes away, you should update your estate plan to reflect this, especially considering that you may have inherited more assets from your spouse.

Children or Grandchildren
If you become a parent, it is vitally important to update your estate plan. If you become a parent, make sure you have named a guardian for your children and provide for them financially in case something happens to you. If you become a grandparent, make sure your will and trust cover this new family member even if his or her parents died before you.

Declining Health
A diagnosis of a degenerative disease or terminal illness should prompt you to expeditiously get your estate plans in order

Whether you need to update your estate plan or begin the estate planning process, we are here to help. The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in wills, trusts, estate planning, and asset protection. If you have any questions about creating a Trust, Will, or estate planning in general, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698.

Though there is no iron clad measure to ensure your heirs do not fight over your estate, you can definitely minimize the chances thorough estate planning with an experienced attorney. We caution clients to take any precautionary measures possible to avoid estate litigation, as this process is costly and can take years. Perhaps the epitome of never-ending and expensive estate battles is that over Anna Nicole Smith’s late husband’s estate.

Anna Nicole Smith was married to J. Howard Marshall for 14 months before he passed away in 1994, leaving an estate estimated to be worth between $500 million and $1 billion. Smith never saw a penny of her husband’s estate because Marshall’s son, E. Pierce Marshall, argued that his father made no mention of her in his will and never set up a trust her. Both Smith and E. Pierce Marshall have since passed, but the estate battle wages on.

In a new development, E. Pierce Marshall’s estate may have to pay up to $44 million to Smith’s daughter. A federal judge agreed with an argument that the son’s estate should be penalized for allegedly lying and cheating in court during the decade long battle over his oil tycoon father’s fortune. Smith’s lawyers have also alleged that E. Pierce Marshall and his attorney deliberately depleted his father’s accounts to deny Smith any money, and backdated, altered, and destroyed documents. The son may have also committed perjury, falsified notary statements, and presented documents to his father under false pretenses.

The court noted that Marshall’s actions were specifically designed to ensure all of his father’s fortune remained in his own hands, away from his Anna Nicole Smith. Lawyers for the estate of Anna Nicole Smith, to which her 7-year-old daughter is the sole heiress, have demanded sanctions be set to compensate for this tortious conduct.

The sanctions could amount to just over $44 million, but they will not be punitive. They will be civil damages, based on real losses caused by Marshall’s misconduct. But even if the sanctions are awarded, Smith’s daughter may not benefit at all from them because the money could entirely go to massive outstanding legal bills.

Make sure your loved ones are accounted for in your estate plan to avoid infinite estate litigation. The Astill Law Office has provided high quality legal services for over 30 years. We specialize in wills, trusts, estate planning, and asset protection. If you have any questions about creating a Trust, Will, or estate planning in general, contact The Astill Law Office at 801-438-8698