Estate Planning

Estate Planning is the process whereby you create a strategic plan for 1) the management and distribution of your assets in the event of your death or incapacity, and 2) the carrying out of your wishes with regard to the caretaking of your person or remains upon your incapacity or death. Estate planning requires you to marshal all of your assets and make specific determinations as to who do you want to receive them. It requires you to evaluate the financial and tax consequences of those actions and prepare for them. San Diego Estate Planning Lawyer Steve Bliss has the knowledge and experience to assist you in accomplishing all of our goals.

What are Settlors, Grantors and Trustors?

Settlors, Grantors and Trustors all mean basically the same thing, it is really the name of the owner and creator of a trust. I prefer to use the term “Settlors” because they are the persons who set up the trust and settle matters related to its management. The only one who will ever be the Settlor of the trust is you. The only one who can revoke or amend the trust is you the Settlor so that when you die, your trust then becomes irrevocable.

What is a Trustee?

Trustee is a fancy name for the manager of the trust. The Trustee is the person who has signature authority to sign on behalf of the trust and to manage all the affairs of the trust. While you are alive it is you. Upon your death or incapacity, you name a person to succeed you as Trustee and that person is called the Successor Trustee. The Successor Trustee has the same authority that you had in their ability to sign on behalf of the trust and to manage all the affairs of the trust. However, the Successor Trustee is not a Settlor of the trust and hence has no authority to modify what you decreed that the trust was to do after your death. The Successor Trustee’s job is to carry out your wishes to the letter and has no discretion to do otherwise. You can choose anyone you want to be your trustee and it is perfectly ok for a beneficiary to be a Successor Trustee. Since it is a financial and legal type job, it is best to pick someone with business savvy so that they manage your trust in the manner in which you intended it to be done and are not taken advantage of by other beneficiaries or swindlers. Quite often professional fiduciaries are used such as private parties or banks and trust companies. They are generally more expensive but have experience in managing trusts whereas your family member probably doesn’t have the same level of experience. Choosing a trustee is an important decision that I help my clients with all the time.

What is a Beneficiary?

Beneficiary is a person or persons who will benefit from the assets of an estate be it a trust estate such as in a revocable living trust situation or in a probate estate situation where there is just a will or no will at all. With regard to your revocable living trust, while you are alive you are the beneficiary of your trust. When you created your revocable living trust you stated in it that upon your death that certain other people will then become the beneficiaries of the trust. As with everything else involved in a revocable living trust, while you are alive it is all yours and when you die, the parties that you picked to be the remainder beneficiaries will then receive the proceeds of the trust estate. If they are not alive, then the contingent beneficiaries that you named in the trust will then receive the proceeds of the trust estate.

What is an Executor?

Executor is the person named by you in a will to manage your probate estate. An Administrator is a person appointed by the court if there is no will to administer the estate. The duties of an Executor and Administrator are the same.

What is an agent?

An agent for either a Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Management or for an Advance Health Care Directive is someone that you designate to make decisions for you in the event that you cannot make them for yourself. Each document gives you the opportunity to specify who you want to fill each role and to name alternates as well. The duties for each document are quite different from each other. The Power of Attorney is a financial job so you would want someone who is both trustworthy and has a good business mind. The Health Care agent should be someone able to make difficult and emotionally challenging medical type decisions that will impact the family and beyond for a long time, As such, it is good to pick someone who is level headed in a crisis and understands the medical issues involved.

Multiple Job Titles:

Quite often the same person is named in the will as Executor, as Successor Trustee in the Trust, as agent for financial matters and agent for the medical directive. It is perfectly fine for one person to do one, two, three or all four jobs, they just understand that as to the probate estate that they are the Executor, as to the trust estate they are the Successor, Trustee and as agent where named in the other documents.