Declaration Revocable Trust: Fill & Download for Free

Here’s an example.Example 1: Kenny is a 40 year old man with a long time live-in girlfriend, Candice, and two young children. Kenny is the sole provider for his family and they live in a nice house with two nice cars. Kenny does well, but doesn’t have much savings. They live paycheck to paycheck.Kenny dies of a stroke. He has no life insurance and Candace now has to deal with attempting to continue paying the mortgage and car payments with no job and no savings. Additionally she finds out that Kenny now has some outstanding medical bills she has to pay from money she really doesn’t have, but Kenny’s estate is tied up in probate court while she waits to be declared his personal representative so that she can get access to the limited funds in his accounts.Candace needs a lawyer. Badly.Example 2: Kenny went to an estate planning lawyer and set up a simple revocable trust, in which he placed his house and named the trust his life insurance beneficiary.Kenny dies of a stroke. Candace is heartbroken, but the house, vehicles and medical expenses are fully paid off thanks to the life insurance, and thanks to the trust, she now has a small source of income to pay for expenses while she searches for a job.Candace is much better off.Although it can be argued that Kenny and Candice didn’t need a lawyer initially, it certainly resulted in a better outcome when they used one.

A2AI can answer this question only with respect to California, where I practice.Some people have written about sophisticated identity-avoidance schemes based on trusts or limited liability companies. See, e.g., the Forbes article How To Remain Anonymous If You Win The $1.5 Billion Powerball Lottery.However, such approaches will not work in California, which expressly requires identification of the winning individual (or group of individuals).Here is what the Winner’s Handbook says about assigning payments to a trust (emphasis added):Can the Lottery Assign Prize Payments to a Trust Established by a Winner?The Lottery will make installment payments to your qualifying trust if you have properly assigned your prize to the trust. A Declaration and Assignment of Lottery Prize to Revocable Living Trust Form can be requested from the Lottery’s Prize Payments – Annuity Desk. For the Lottery to make payments to a trust, the prize winner must be the grantor of the revocable trust and the trust must be linked to the winner’s social security number. The trust must be governed by the laws of the State of California. Upon a winner’s death, if prize payments were properly assigned, the trustee must notify the Lottery of the winner’s death and of the proper distribution of the payments under the trust. The Lottery may make payments to irrevocable trusts or subtrusts which were established in a winner’s qualifying trust so long as the appropriate form is on file prior to the winner’s death. If this form is not on file, the Lottery will make payments pursuant to established Lottery procedures or as ordered by the court. Keep in mind, a trust cannot claim a Lottery prize.

Typically, only the Trustor of a revocable trust has the power to amend or revoke it.If you are asking about having a trust declared invalid in a trust contest, similar to a Will contest, at least in Washington, the laws that govern a trust contest are virtually the same as those that govern a Will contest.Richard Wills, retired probate attorney originally licensed in CA & WA