It’s Richard Morgan at Morgan and DiSalvo. Another in our series of Back to the Basics of video newsletters. So we’re gonna take a little deeper dive now on long-term trusts. So long-term trust is one of the ways that we pass assets to the children at the second death of married couple or the first death … the death of a single person. So we can have trusts last for a long time, throughout the child’s generation. And then we can have it go to the grandchildren and pay out installments at that point. Or we can have it keep going.

So in Georgia law and many other states now, we can go for many, many years in Georgia, up to 360 years. Now some people laugh. “I don’t want a trust to last 360 years.” It’s not about 360 years. It’s about not being forced to remove the assets and get rid of that great trust benefit, which is the asset protection and control feature of the trust. So now, when we have this trust, a couple ways we can go: One, the incredibly flexible. So when the child’s old enough they become their own trustee, their own trust, it’s practically invisible from their perspective but legally effective from outsiders.

The other way to go is we’re not gonna be that flexible. We really want to make sure that we protect the child from themselves. Either because we go to our deep sleep, we want to make sure that no matter what happens on this Earth, they’re gonna be okay. Unless the Earth explodes they will always be financially okay. And then that case we need a third party trustee, probably a trust company, who will always guarantee that it will be okay.

The other situations are special. You may have a special needs child that can’t take care of themselves, is unemployable, might need government benefits. You might have a situation where you have drug dependency or other issues. So you want to make sure in your situation what makes the most sense. But the long-term trust structure is a great way to go in many, many cases.

Richard Morgan, Morgan and DiSalvo.