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Article: Revocable Living Trusts: No Estate Plan Cure-all.(Estate Planning)
- Article from:
- Kiplinger's Retirement Report
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 The Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A revocable living trust (RLT) can be a useful estate-planning tool. The grantor creates it while alive and has authority to change beneficiaries and move assets in and out of the trust.
But an RLT is far from being everyone's estate-planning panacea, as touted by some RLT proponents who hawk them uncritically--often in living-trust seminars.
THE ADVANTAGES SHRINK WITH SCRUTINY
Many of an RLT's advantages dwindle and often disappear upon inspection. Here are the most common:
Estate tax savings. Assets left in an RLT do not escape estate taxes. In the eyes of the IRS, it's exactly as if you'd died without the trust. True, an RLT that ...