Financial Advisors Should Revise Living Trusts Issued Prior 2010 Estate Tax Law

Condon_Living-Trust-3eBestselling Author Jeff Condon has published an updated and revised edition of The Living Trust Advisor: Everything You (and Your Financial Planner) Need to Know About Your Living Trust in which he strongly advises financial planners to ask their married clients if they established their Living Trusts before the 2010 Estate Tax changes.  Why?  Because if one spouse dies with a pre-2010 Living Trust, the surviving spouse will be burdened with time-consuming and expensive steps with the Living Trust assets that could have been avoided with a simple amendment.

This warning is just one example of the valuable advice Jeff Condon shares with financial planners and advisors in The Living Trust Advisor.    Mr. Condon considers the financial planners and advisors integral to an attorney’s estate planning practice.  A team for the benefit of their mutual clients.

While the estate planning lawyer rarely sees or communicates with his Living Trust clients, the financial planner is on the “front lines” of their clients’ lives who check in regularly with inquiries about their financial picture and latest family developments, such as births of grandchildren, graduations and deaths.  In many cases, the financial advisor also asks about whether his clients’ established their Living Trust and, if so, whether they have updated it to cover their latest family developments.  Because a sound plan to leave wealth after death is just as important as the investment strategy which creates that wealth.

So…while the attorney sits at his desk, the financial planner sits in front of their clients. The financial planner is there with them…and their Living Trust.  And with the “Financial Advisor Alerts” peppered throughout The Living Trust Advisor, the financial planner will be able to confidently sift through his clients’ Living Trust and zero in on certain sections that could inadvertently cause harm to his clients’ children and their relationships with each other.

These Financial Advisor Alerts in The Living Trust Advisor do not ask financial planners to practice law.  They simply educate financial planners on recognizing problems.  As Jeff’ often says…95% of the solution to any problem is recognizing the problem in the first place.  After the Financial Advisor Alerts point out the unwanted or unintended ramifications of certain provisions of his clients’ Living Trust, the financial planner can then offer advice for them to see the lawyer is not just “lip service” to make you look good or CYA purposes

Written in Jeff Condon’s reader-friendly, understandable and entertaining fashion, The Living Trust Advisor is a comprehensive guide to Living Trusts with expert financial and legal guidance which has been updated to reflect recent changes to the Estate Tax Law.

More than a reference book, The Living Trust Advisor guides financial advisors and their clients through the often daunting process of establishing, living with and maintaining a Living Trust which is the most common inheritance planning vehicle in America.

in The Living Trust Advisor. Other subjects covered are how to prevent a good inheritance plan from “going bad”; how to ensure that an inheritance plan will be carried out; how to set up an inheritance plan that gives the next generation a helping hand—not a free ride; how to prevent common family bickering that arises when parents die; how to protect a child’s inheritance from an ex-spouse, financial immaturity, creditors, addictions, bankruptcy, tax problems, and all other risks of loss… and much more.

Jeffrey L. Condon is an attorney who has practiced in the field of trusts and estates since 1987.  He received his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at UCLA (Class of 83) and his law degree from Whittier of College School of Law in 1987.  He presently practices at the Law Offices of Condon & Condon in Santa Monica, California.   With his late father, Gerald M. Condon, Jeffrey is the co-author of Beyond The Grave: The Right Way and Wrong Way of Leaving Money to Your Children (and Others).  First published in 1996 and revised in 2014, the Wall Street Journal has called Beyond the Grave “the best estate planning book in America.”

Jeffrey has been cited as a source for over 100 newspaper and magazine articles discussing  inheritance planning, including New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington  Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Kiplinger’s and Business Week.    The topics in this area are so many and diverse, he has been quoted in periodicals ranging from Fortune to DogWorld.