What is a Irrevocable Trust?
Irrevocable trusts created during your lifetime are generally created to remove assets from your estate, placing them beyond your control. This can be done for protection of the assets and/or for estate tax reasons. One of the most common uses of irrevocable trust is to own large life insurance policies whose proceeds may be subjected to estate tax if they are not placed outside of your estate.
If you own life insurance at your death, it is includable in your estate when calculating estate taxes. In other words, if your taxable estate exceeds the applicable exclusion amount, any insurance could be depleted by almost half. You can transfer ownership of policies to individuals, such as your children, who will make decisions regarding the policies, such as continuation of premium payments and use of dividends during your lifetime as well as the distribution of proceeds upon your death. Or you can establish an irrevocable life insurance trust, also commonly referred to as an “ILIT,” which you can structure to accomplish your control goals while minimizing or eliminating estate taxes on the death payout. An irrevocable life insurance trust can also be structured to protect insurance payouts from creditors of both the insured and the beneficiaries.
If you have life insurance contact our Chicago trust attorneys for a consultation to determine if you require this type of trust.
Types of Trusts We Establish:
- Chicago Trusts Attorney
- Revocable Trust
- Irrevocable Trust
- Supplemental Special Needs Trust
- Charitable Trusts
- Credit Shelter/Applicable Exclusion Amount Shelter Trust
- Generation Skipping Trust
- Pet Trust
- Estate Freeze Trust
- Qualified Personal Residence Trust (QPRT)
- Qualified Domestic Trust (QDT)
- Trusts for LGBT and other Life Partners
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