Family Trusts: Planning to Preserve, Protect and Transfer Wealth for Your Clients

Author: Steven G. Siegel

Learn How to Use Family Trusts to Achieve a Range of Objectives for Clients
Clients often seek guidance on how to best set aside money, property and investments for family members, friends and other individuals they want to help — their beneficiaries. These clients often want these assets to be managed according to specific parameters with special protections.

This is where family trusts can be established to accomplish these objectives and benefit other parts of the client's financial and estate plan. Family trusts may take different forms and, if properly created as to avoid classification as a business entity and addressing the advantages and disadvantages of taxing the income to the grantor, they can present several opportunities for tax savings. Family trusts can be funded without gift tax cost while reducing the settlor's gross estate and producing family income tax savings through the shifting of income-generating assets from the estate owner to the trust and its beneficiaries, presumably in lower income tax brackets.

Publication Date: October 2021

Designed For
This course is essential for CPAs, tax preparers, accountants, enrolled agents, CFPs, tax attorneys and other professionals who advise clients on tax, retirement and estate planning, and other wealth management matters.

Topics Covered

• Why are family trusts useful and necessary?
• What are the elements of a family trust?
• How Long May a Trust Last?
• Protection Against Creditors
• What Are the Elements of a Family Trust?
• Trusts Used to Protect the Interests of the Grantor: Living Trusts
• Trusts for the Family as a Whole: The Family Bypass Trust
• Using Trusts to Benefit a Surviving Spouse
• Using Trusts to Benefit Minor Children
• The Spousal Lifetime Access Trust
• Using Trusts to Hold Life Insurance Proceeds
• Using Trusts to Benefit Multiple Generations of the Family: Dynasty Trusts
• Trusts to Include Benefits for Charities
• Transfer Family Home Through a Trust: The Qualified Personal Residence Trust
• Tenancy in Common Discount
• Interest Rate Environment
• A Special Trust for Family Business Assets The Qualified Subchapter S Trust (QSST)
• Another Special Trust for Family Business Assets: The Electing Small Business Trust (ESBT)
• Use a Family Trust to Freeze the Value and Dispose of Valuable Property: Sale to an Intentionally Defective Grantor Trust
• Use a Family Trust to Transfer Wealth with No Gift Tax Cost: Using the GRAT
• Consider a Family Trust as the Beneficiary of a Retirement Plan

Learning Objectives

• Describe what family trusts are and how they can be used to accomplish a range of client objectives
• Recognize how to explain to clients the different types of family trusts and their advantages and disadvantages
• Identify which trust is best used for those seeking protection from creditors
• Recognize which state eliminated the Rule Against Perpetuities and instituted a 1,000- year rule instead
• Identify which provision prohibits a beneficiary from pledging their interest in a trust as collateral
• Recognize tax characteristics of trusts
• Identify advantages of a living trust

Level
Basic

Instructional Method
Self-Study

NASBA Field of Study
Taxes (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
None

Advance Preparation
None