The Inheritor's Trust is an exciting concept we trademarked in 2005, which has been the topic of a number of media articles in The Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger's, Bloomberg, Lawyers Weekly USA, Financial Adviser and other journals.
The concept is relatively simple. Our clients are trained to understand the importance of setting up dynasty trusts or Megatrusts for their descendants. But what about our clients' future inheritances? Why not plan for them just as well as we plan for their descendants? When we meet with our clients, we generally ask them if they expect to receive any inheritances anytime in the future. This often leads to us handling the estate plans of our clients' parents. But sometimes it doesn't simply because the parents like their existing attorney and don't understand the value that can be given to their descendants if they will have us handling all of their estate planning.
In that case, our clients say to their parents, "I understand that you don't want to disrupt your current estate plan. I am not asking you for anything more than you were already planning to leave me, if anything. But if you are leaving me an inheritance, would you mind amending your revocable trust so that anything that would be going to me outright will instead be distributed to my Inheritor's Trust which is a specially designed Beneficiary Controlled Dynasty Trust that will protect my inheritance from estate taxes at my death and from my creditors and divorcing spouses even though I control it?" It is rare that a parent would say "No" to a mature child who asks the parent to do this. The parents often say, "Hmmm...It protects it from your spouse! Where do I sign up?"
For more information on the Inheritor's Trust, read:
• "The Inheritor's Trustsm: The Art of Properly Inheriting Property," Estate Planning, Vol. 30, Nos. 9 and 10 (Sept. and Oct. 2003), co-authored by Richard A. Oshins and Noel C. Ice