Introduction to Trusts and why Asset Protection is so important
Rocco Beatrice gives an introduction to irrevocable trusts and an explanation of how they protect their owners. The article goes into additional benefits of revocable and irrevocable trusts including what is needed to set a one up.
Hello, my name is Rocco Beatrice. I am the Managing Director for Estate Street Partners. We provide financial solutions to your problem of wealth. We coordinate with your financial goals. We bring to the table the different disciplines, the accountants, the lawyers, the appraisers, the tax guys all for the purpose of protecting your wealth against potential frivolous lawsuits, to minimize your taxes on your income streams, to defer your capital gains taxes, to eliminate the probate process, and to eliminate the Estate tax. And finally, to facilitate tax efficient transfers of your wealth to whomever you’d like in the second generation and for asset protection.
The ULTRA TRUST®
And now I would like to talk to you about the Ultra Trust. With the Ultra Trust, you are repositioning your assets from you to an irrevocable trust. The purpose of which, is that you don’t own the asset. You legally don’t own the asset. If you do not own the asset, lawyers won’t sue you; the marketing people can’t track information about you and your wealth so that they can sell it to the highest bidder. If you don’t have any assets upon your death, they don’t have to go to probate and if you don’t have any assets on the date of death you don’t have to file the Estate tax return.
What’s a Trust?
Now I would like to talk to you about, what a trust is! A trust, no matter what type – irrevocable trust, revocable trust, grantor trust, non-grantor trust – is really nothing more than a contract between you and someone else. If there is a contract between you and I, we can sit down and decide you’re going to do this, you’re going to do that. Therefore, an Ultra Trust is nothing more than a private contract between you, the person with the money, and your trustee, the person who manages the money on behalf of your beneficiaries. And the beneficiaries can be you, your wife, your children, anyone you wish, your girlfriend, boyfriend, dog, cat, whatever. It’s whomever you desire.
What makes the Ultra Trust such a powerful device is the independence of the trustee. The trustee must be independent; he cannot be related to you by blood or marriage. If you have trouble delineating yourself from your assets, you have to have the asset in your name, then this is not for you. Because you legally have to separate your assets from yourself to the trust. It’s like leasing a car. You don’t own the car, but you get to use the car. You get to pay all the expenses for the car. If it’s a business car, you get to tax deduct all the expenses related to the rental of that car. You get to use the car. The Ultra Trust is essentially that. You reposition your assets from yourself to the trust. You no longer own the asset. If you no longer own the asset, no lawyer is going to take a contingency fee case where he’s going to collect 1/3 of nothing. The marketing people are not going to track to see how much money you have so that at dinner time you’re going to get a call from the kitchen guy, the window guy, the insurance guy and so forth to interrupt your dinner. You don’t own any assets; marketing people won’t get any information about you and your wealth.
If you don’t own any assets, then you don’t have to go to probate because probate is about people that own property, whether you have a will or not. And the Estate taxes which is taxation on what you own on the date of your death. You don’t own anything. Therefore, you avoid all these headaches. And if you don’t have any assets, you also qualify for government services.
Read more:
- Part 2 – Reposition Assets Taxes Probate
- Part 3 – Medicaid: 5-year look back
- Part 4 – Asset Protection Benefciary / Heirs