16: Trusts and Protecting Your Home

Episode Summary 

Transferring ownership of your home to your child or children is easy, but that’s where the uneasiness often begins. When you give joint or sole ownership of your home to your child or children while you are still alive, you lose some or all control of the asset. Additionally, the home becomes vulnerable to new types of risk—some predictable, some unforeseeable. So, before you place the name(s) of your child or children on the deed to your home, Jeff Bellomo would like to teach you about trusts.

Key Takeaways 

 Takeaway 1: When transferring home ownership to an adult child, be sure to consider possible changes to the new owner’s circumstances – 01:00

People often think that they can fully protect their family home by giving their child or children joint or sole ownership of the asset

Transferring ownership of the home means that your asset is now their asset

Consider what could happen if the adult child gets divorced or remarried, incurs liability in a car accident, dies unexpectedly, or needs special health care for themselves or a member of their immediate family

These unforeseen circumstances, and many others, can put your assets at risk

Without control of the asset, it can be used in ways that were not intended when you transferred ownership

Takeaway 2: Bellomo & Associates workshops are designed to educate so that you understand the implications of your decisions – 13.54

The workshop team encourages attendees to think in terms of three “lands” (tax land, long-term care land, and estate planning land)

A decision in any one of these lands will have implications in one or both of the other lands

Smart decisions rely on understanding these implications

Takeaway 3: A trust can provide protection for your assets and enable you to retain control of the assets while you are alive – 18:32

The assets in a trust will pass to your trustee(s) with only a 4% inheritance tax rate for lineal descendants (your children)

If your child or children sell the property, there will be no capital gains tax

This trust strategy provides far better protection of your assets than joint ownership or fully relinquishing ownership of a property to your child or children

Links and Resources Mentioned

Bellomo & Associates workshops, including Medicaid: https://bellomoassociates.com/workshops/

For more information, call us at (717) 845-5390.   

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