When you establish a trust, one of the biggest decisions you make is who will serve as trustee if you become ill or pass away. You must be able to rely on your successor trustee to follow your instructions, manage trust assets as a reasonably prudent person, make appropriate distributions and avoid even a hint of self-dealing. In my experience, most successor trustees do just fine, especially when they are represented by a competent trust administration attorney. But what if your successor trustee isn’t up to the job? What if they go rogue when you’re not there to do something about it? That’s when using a trust protector can really give you tremendous peace of mind.

Clients and other attorneys regularly ask me who can be the trustee of a Special Needs Trust.  The quick answer is that it cannot be the person with a disability (i.e., the beneficiary) or their spouse.  The law effectively prohibits it.  If we were to make the beneficiary or their spouse trustee, the funds held [...]

If you have a child with special needs, there are some things you absolutely must know about estate planning. First, failing to plan will jeopardize any needs-based government benefits your child receives. That’s because California law (i.e., the laws of “intestacy”) will determine how much your child gets from your estate. Think of everything you [...]

Together with one of our clients, I discussed special needs planning with radio host Jeffrey Callison this morning. We were featured on a segment of Insight on Capital Public Radio.
Many thanks to Jill Swett for helping me to raise awareness about this kind of planning, which is absolutely critical for parents of children with special [...]