Do You Need An Irrevocable Protection Trust?

At first glance, this trust looks pretty much like the one I wrote about in our last blog – the irrevocable trust. But it’s not. In fact, just to highlight the difference, let’s call this one a “Medicaid Retained Income Trust.”

So, you may be asking, “What is the difference? And what the heck does ‘Medicaid Retained Income’ mean, anyway?”

It means you can – despite the “irrevocable” - transfer some of your assets into this trust. Of course, “irrevocable” means you can’t get it back again. But this “irrevocable” trust has sort of a back door. In reality, this type of trust can give you back some of the assets you put into it (shhh!), such as income from rental properties or bond funds…so you can have the money you may need later on. But the nice thing about is that this back-door is not open to your creditors or Medicaid; they can’t get in! The assets in this type of trust are off-limits to them.

Most of the people who come to see me are people who’ve done right by their communities and by their families. They’ve worked hard, planned well, raised their kids, and their homes are paid off. They just want to be reassured that some of their assets will be available when they need them – for them only! And that’s where the Retained Income Trust comes in. It’s a hybrid between an irrevocable trust and a revocable trust. And it allows you the flexibility either one by itself might not.

In fact, there are a number of more-flexible types of trusts that are helping our clients, because they can be tailored to a variety of situations. And if you don’t at least look into them…you may be at risk for losing everything you’ve worked for.

But you don’t have to be at risk! And you don’t have to be confused.

At the Law Offices of Alice Reiter Feld & Associates, we’ve been minimizing risks for South Florida families for 33 years. We practice Elder Law – and only Elder Law. And we’ve designed pretty much every type of trust you can imagine for our families…along with other estate planning tools such as wills and asset protection, and assistance with long-term care planning, Medicaid, and the VA.

Give us a call. We can help protect you, too.