Monday, June 23, 2008

Living trusts on NPR

As I was driving yesterday afternoon, I happened to catch a discussion on NPR of the advantages of living trusts. I've looked for a transcript at their website, but haven't found one. An "estate planning expert" from Kiplinger's was interviewed, and he was very enthusiastic about the utility of trusts for financial management. In fact, he said that anyone who owns a home and a car is a trust candidate, which seemed overly broad to me.

One bit of good advice that he offered was to be wary of those seminars touting living trusts, especially if they are promising tax benefits. He also emphasized that trusts need to be drafted individually for each family. On the other hand, he didn't discuss the issue of selecting a trustee, or even the idea of corporate fiduciaries.

In what seemed like an organizational oddity, next week's interview with this gentleman will cover powers of attorney.
Posted by Jim Gust at 12:28 PM

1 comment:

JLM said...

A transcript and link to an audio of the interview are here.

Kiplinger's John Ventura talked about wills the preceding week and tackles powers of attorney next. Sounds like a reasonable sequence to me. Wouldn't be surprised if a Merrill Anderson brochure had used it, some time or other.

Most simple, self-trusteed living trusts don't contain nearly enough to call for a corporate fiduciary. To repeat what I thought was the long-obvious point made in 8 Reasons You Should Not Expect an Inheritance, only Boomers with rich parents should expect to inherit more than a pittance.

But in part that's because Boomers' parents are staying alive and slipping bits of their modest wealth to the kids and grandkids now. Hardly cause for Boomer complaint.

4:17 PM

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