Condon - The living trust advisor: everything you (and your financial planner) need to know about your living trust

Cover design: Wiley

Copyright 2016 by Jeffrey L. Condon. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
The first edition was published by Wiley in 2008.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Condon, Jeffrey L., author.
The living trust advisor : everything you (and your financial planner) need to know about your living trust / Jeffrey L. Condon. Second edition.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-119-07394-9 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-119-09328-2 (ePDF);
ISBN 978-1-119-09331-2 (ePub)
1. Living trustsUnited StatesPopular works. 2. Estate planningUnited StatesPopular works. I. Title.
KF734.C66 2016
346.7305'2dc23

2015029526

For Kyle Collins. For my family and I, your name
shall hereinafter be synonymous with resilience, courage,
and strength of spirit.

If this book is in your hands, you are probably thinking about putting together a Living Trust, which is the primary tool in the United States for the transfer of your assets after the deaths of both you and your spouse to your children, grandchildren, or other heirs. Or perhaps you already have your Living Trust, which has collected dust on your bookshelf or in your safe-deposit box, and you somehow have been prompted into revisiting it.

For a combined 70 years, my late father, teacher, and mentor, Gerald Condon, and I set up thousands of Living Trusts for our clients. After all those years of advising clients on their inheritance instructions, I am left with this one conclusion: You really dont know much about the Living Trust... or how it works... or what it should say or do... even if you have one!

Actually, perhaps that assessment is too broad to be of practical use. I do tend to speak in sweeping generalizations. Let me be more specific by lumping you into one of four categories of Living Trust clients:

1. You do not have a Living Trust, and you dont really know much about the Living Trust other than it is some kind of inheritance document.
2. You already have a Living Trust, but you have no real or meaningful understanding of what it is or how it works beyond the basic function of transferring your assets to your children after your death without probate. In other words, you just signed it where your attorney told you to sign, threw it into your car, and have not thought about it since.
3. You have a Living Trust and you initially made a real and earnest effort to decipher its form and function. But many years have passed since you established it, and all you really recall is (a) you have a Living Trust and (b) it contains your inheritance instructions.
4. You have a Living Trust, and you refused to sign it until your lawyer explained every single paragraph and provision to your satisfaction. If you are such a person, I say to you: Your kind is so rare that you qualify as an urban legend.

Whether you are a Living Trust rookie or veteran, welcome to this revised edition of The Living Trust Advisor, and congratulations on dealing with the often unpleasant task of facing your mortality!

Now, for you readers who are in the financial planning and advising profession, I also extend my heartiest welcome. At first blush, you may say to yourself, Self, why do you need an education in the nuts and bolts of the Living Trust? Youre not a lawyer. Your job description is to make as much money for your clients as safely possible. If your clients have any estate planning needs, youll simply advise them to see an estate planning attorney. Have a nice day, Self!

Thats what I used to think as well. You financial people come up with a plan to make your clients money, and Ill come up with a plan to leave your clients money to their children, grandchildren, and other heirs. And never the twain shall meet.

Let me tell you how I learned otherwise with the tale of the comeuppance that I received from a 300-plus group of your colleagues. It wasnt pretty. But if it wasnt for that experience, I would never have come to know about the importance of the financial advisor in my professional life.

About 10 years ago, I was invited to speak on The Right Way and the Wrong Way of Leaving Money to Your Children (& Others) before a national conference of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) in Colorado Springs. I gave this talk at a few previous regional FPA conferences (including Providence, Rhode Island, where I met an FPA member named... Jeff Condon. What are the odds?). I assume I was a big enough hit at those prior gigs to justify the FPA paying my speaking fee and travel expenses for the national gathering. Using baseball parlance, it was like going from the minor leagues to the Show.

When I am introduced at my talks, my credits never fail to strike a chord with the attendees. Although there are numerous estate planning attorneys with more impressive professional credentials than mine, none can claim that they wrote the best-selling inheritance-related book in American publishing history that the Wall Street Journal called the best estate planning book in America... or can say they have appeared on dozens of well-known television, radio, and Internet shows and outlets. As the conferences program coordinator ran through my accomplishments, I heard the usual mutters of Wow! Really? Impressive. Gee. This should be good. Before I uttered word one, I had won over the 300 or so attendeesand I knew for certain that my presentation would leave them entertained and edified.