Living Trust & Asset Protection

・Living Trust

Living trust
A Living Trust can allow you to eliminate Probate and it enables you to distribute your estate to your heirs without delay according to Trust contents. A will itself is unable to eliminate probate. It takes a long time and has high costs. Setting up a Living Trust has the following benefits as well as the foregoing:

Advantage of setting living trust
  • If you, as the Trustor were to have a mental and/or physical disability, it allows for someone you have appointed to control and make decisions on your behalf.
  • By combining with Bypass Trust (known as AB Trust), it enables both husband and wife to make a maximum deduction of estate tax.
  • If one of the spouses is a non-US citizen, he/she cannot get marital deduction for estate tax purpose. By setting up a Living Trust with QDOT Trust, he/she can defer estate tax.

・Asset Protection

Asset Protection is to protect your individual/business assets by setting up Trusts so that you can make safe retirement living while keeping your hard-earned assets. The trust that allows you to protect your assets is called Irrevocable Trust and it differs from the Living Trust explained above. Although there are various kinds of Irrevocable Trusts, you may also need to consider one as an Estate and Retirement Plan since it provides you not only protections from real estate management, auto accidents, unexpected lawsuits against your business but also many advantages such as the following:

Advantage of setting Asset Protection
  • Eliminate or defer Capital Gain Taxes when you sell real estate property
  • Get a guaranteed income for life when combining with an Annuity plan
  • Eliminate or defer Depreciation Recapture Taxes
  • Eliminate Probate
  • No Estate Tax

*Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust could be set up with a Living Trust or by itself. In addition to the effectiveness as asset protection, it gives you no responsibility for paying estate tax. Those who reside in Japan can set up Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust and its advantages also apply to their estate plan.

・Process

Since many kinds of Trust exist and each individual/business situations are different, we process to set up the Trusts under the following flow charts by our affiliated attorney who specializes in Estate Planning.
Process
*In case you need changes, corrections, or cancellation after setting up Trusts, your agent will contact an attorney and take care of it accordingly.