Estate plans can often contain both wills and trusts. The majority of benefits are derived from the existence of the trust. These can include such things as probate avoidance and potential estate tax avoidance. More information regarding trusts can be found in the Trusts Series of this blog. In order to take full advantage of all the benefits of a trust, as much of the donor’s property and assets as possible must be placed within the trust. Sometimes people die without having re-titled all their eligible property in the name of their trust, resulting in some property being part of the Donor’s probate estate.
In such instances, the pour-over will can be utilized to complete the funding of the inter vivos trust after the death of the donor. Pour-over wills are wills that contain provisions stating that the remainder of the assets and property owned by the testator / donor at the time of his death are not to be distributed to any heirs, but are instead to be “poured over” into the trust that he created while he was still alive.
This type of will allows the donor / testator to control the complete distribution of his assets through the trust he created without having to also worry about the distribution of assets through a will.
It should be noted that any property or assets that are “poured over” by the will into the trust will still need to be probated, therefore it is still important to transfer as much property into the trust during the lifetime of the donor as possible in order to keep his probate estate as small as possible, or eliminate it entirely.
Tags: asset protection, Estate Planning, probate, Wills, Wills series