Specializing Attorneys

It’s important to have a legally drafted plan and a solid relationship with a knowledgeable estate planning lawyer before a crisis or death occurs. Decisions relating to your health, finances, taxes, property and legal obligations made while you are healthy and competent can help your heirs and beneficiaries avoid painful disputes when the inevitable occurs. Taking action now will allow you to seize tax efficiencies, cost controls, asset protection strategies and other advantages.

Trusts can help you preserve and protect wealth now and in the future. They are designed with four main purposes:

• Help heirs and beneficiaries avoid disputes
• Wealth management advantages, including reducing or eliminating tax liabilities
• Delay asset disbursements until beneficiaries achieve certain ages or other milestones
• Supplement or replace a will

Types Of Trusts That Van DeWater & Van DeWater Handles

Different trusts serve different purposes, and they are defined in two main categories: “testamentary trusts” and “living trusts.” A testamentary trust, also known as an irrevocable trust, is created following your death to distribute assets in the trust according to your wishes. A living trust, also known as a revocable trust, allows you to remove assets from it during your lifetime, and it’s helpful in allowing the assets to forego the probate process.

Our Poughkeepsie trust attorneys advise our clients on a variety of revocable and irrevocable trusts, including:

• Special needs trusts allow a disabled beneficiary to receive distributions from the trust while not being disqualified from receiving government benefits he or she is entitled to. Types of special needs trusts include supplemental needs trusts, Medicaid trusts and Miller trusts.
• Charitable trusts benefit charities or the general public and avoid estate and gift tax.
• Education trusts specify funds to be used for education purposes only and are distributed by a trustee.</p.
• Spendthrift trusts don’t allow beneficiaries to sell or pledge away interests in the trust and funds are protected from the beneficiaries’ creditors until the trust property is distributed.
• Marital trusts or tax bypass trusts allow one spouse to limit the amount of federal estate tax that would be assessed upon money left to the other spouse when the second spouse dies, thereby protecting the assets when children or other beneficiaries receive the assets of the trust.
• Asset protection trusts protect assets from future creditors’ claims by establishing an account outside of U.S. jurisdiction to which the trustmaker is not a current beneficiary for a specified number of years.

We help our New York clients establish several other types of useful trusts, which incorporate a number of other strategies to transfer property and assets from one generation to the next or from private party to public property.

Each case we handle is extremely unique, and we are prepared to create an estate plan incorporating trusts that fit your particular needs and objectives precisely. Our partners, associates and staff take great care in developing your unique plan.