Is a trust right for you?

Considering what will happen after you are gone is never a pleasant thought. However, ensuring the equitable distribution of your assets and reducing the burden on your heirs is something to which you have probably given some thought.

One important goal you might have that may be realized through a trust is to see that assets you have worked so hard to accumulate are protected and can pass on to your beneficiaries how and when you want. Trusts can provide you with other significant benefits as well. They can:

• Supply you, or others, with income from the trust assets.
• Provide management of your financial affairs in case you become unable to do so.
• Help you and your heirs avoid the expense and delay of probate proceedings.
• May provide income, capital gain, and estate savings.
  

Trusts are often part of a comprehensive estate plan designed to organize and simplify your finances and your future. The idea that trusts are only for the extremely wealthy is no longer true. More and more individuals and families are creating trusts for control, gifting, protection, and privacy.

Using The Dime Bank, you can access powerful trust strategies to attain your financial goals.

Financial Control

Trusts can allow you to control the income generated and direct how your assets will be distributed. Through trusts, you can decide who receives income and how and when it will be used. Certain life events, such as a graduation or attainment of a specific age, can trigger trust distributions.

Financial Gifting

Trusts can be created to set up a gifting program that benefits you and/or your heirs, and the qualified charities of your choice. A Charitable Remainder trust can be used to provide deferred or immediate income to you, you and your spouse, or anyone you choose.

Charitable Remainder trusts can be established to utilize tax codes, providing for more favorable tax consequences and principal protection. Assets contributed to Charitable Remainder trusts can be sold by the trustee and reinvested into a diversified investment portfolio designed to provide income and growth. This diversification helps to increase the trust's income and reduce its risk.

Financial Protection

Trusts can protect against inappropriate investment decisions and expenditures while assuring your assets reach your intended beneficiaries. You and/or your family may be the beneficiaries of a trust created for the near or distant future.
Often, Marital or Family trusts are used to protect and provide for your surviving spouse and direct specific distributions to your beneficiaries. These trusts can direct that a surviving spouse is financially supported and that assets pass to your beneficiaries even if your spouse remarries.

Special Needs trusts are designed to financially support a child or family member with special medical or emotional needs that will require lifetime care. These trusts can be established and directed not to diminish any government benefits available to the beneficiary. A trust can provide the invaluable continuity and responsibility a special needs person may require.

Financial Privacy

Personal trusts are not subject to public court proceedings or probate records. Your directives and beneficiaries remain as private as you specify.

Estate Settlement

In less complicated times, people relied on close relatives or friends to settle their estates. Today, naming an inexperienced executor is not only shortsighted but can be potentially costly. The characteristics of an ideal executor or personal representative include:

• Financial responsibility.
• Unquestioned integrity and objectivity.
• Patience and sympathy.
• Professional investment experience.
• Familiarity with tax questions that arise when an estate is settled.
• Immortality (What if your executor dies before you do, or before completing the settlement of your estate?)
  

I need a trust, now what?

While legal assistance is not necessary to understand the basics of trusts, it is critical in their drafting. Contact a lawyer who is experienced in these matters. There are many different kinds of trusts, each with its own financial, legal and tax implications. A professional can advise you on the benefits of each type and show you how a trust can help you achieve your estate-planning goals.

Key Points of Common Trusts

Revocable Trusts

• Established during a lifetime.
• Can be changed or revoked during lifetime.
• Can provide ongoing management of affairs.
• Offers protection for incapacitation.
• Passes assets directly to heirs.
• Avoids probate delay and expense.

Irrevocable Trusts

• Established during life or upon death.
• Generally cannot be changed.
• May reduce or eliminate taxes due upon death.

Marital or Family Trusts

• Can provide income and principal, if needed, to a surviving spouse or others.
• Assets distributed to heirs at the end of the income beneficiary's life.

Charitable Remainder Trusts

• Income to donor or others.
• Income tax deduction.
• Avoids capital gain taxes.
• Reduces taxable estate.
• Residual trust value to charity.

Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts

• Keeps life insurance proceeds out of taxable estate.
• Heirs receive life insurance benefits estate tax-free.
• Used to manage insurance proceeds for beneficiaries.

Choosing The Dime Bank as Your Trustee

Continuity, impartiality and experience are benefits of choosing an institutional trustee like The Dime Bank.

We offer free, no obligation portfolio analysis and will schedule convenient appointments in any of The Dime Bank branch offices to answer any trust inquiries you may have. You will find an emphasis on responsive, personal service that is exceptional in today's financial world.