Parents of adult children with substance abuse issues face an especially difficult challenge. They no longer have authority to make decisions for the child, and yet, they are forced to watch the child make mistake after mistake.
When you add estate planning to the mix, parents find themselves with another conundrum. Say a parent wants to leave her child an inheritance. There isn’t any guarantee the child won’t use the inheritance to feed their addiction. –So what can the parent do?
This is one of those areas where a trust agreement proves its worth as a legal document.
A trust “spells out the rules” in regards to assets held in the trust. This means the parent can set the rules in regards to controlling what distributions an heir receives, and limit the heir’s access to trust money.
What’s more, the parent can set rules as to how distributions should be altered if substance abuse is suspected. If the parent wants the child rewarded with additional distributions for reaching a specific sobriety milestone, the trust can provide for that as well.
The trust can even be drafted to include provisions which allow the trustee to pay for specific services, such as counseling or rehabilitation programs.
Of course, a trust isn’t a cure for substance abuse. It does however, offer parents peace of mind, knowing whatever inheritance they leave will be used to help, not hurt their child.
For more information about wills, trusts or other estate planning documents, please contact a qualified estate planning attorney.

After your estate planning attorney has drafted a Living Trust that perfectly fits your particular needs and you’ve signed the Trust agreement, you’re done, right? … Almost. Simply signing the Trust agreement isn’t enough for a Living Trust to function properly. After the agreement is signed, your Trust must be “funded.” If you don’t do it, then your Trust will have no effect.

This isn’t anything that should greatly worry anyone working with a good estate planning attorney, as the attorney should help you. Yet, here is where things have the potential to get tricky.

Let’s say you have found a great estate planning attorney. For argument sake, let’s say that you have even hired our own Debra Leffler Streeter, the 2014 North County Bar Association President. Madam President has worked with you to fund the trust immediately (as most good attorneys will). You shake hands, part ways, and expect that everything is okay. And it is okay. Until … Story time …

We recently met with a client who created a Trust, funded the trust, and later discovered upon meeting with our attorney, that her house was no longer funded in the Trust. How in the world did that happen you might ask?

The answer is that the client had refinanced her home after having the Trust prepared. The lender required that she remove the home from the Trust. Unfortunately, the client was unaware that once removed from the Trust, the home would need to be transferred back into the Trust.

In my telling of the story there is a happy ending. We caught the mistake within her lifetime, updated her Trust, and everyone lives happily ever after. Whew!

Sadly, the real story is a little different. The client was actually the daughter. The Living Trust belonged to her mother, and the solution was going to court to fix the problem. If the error had been caught while mom was still alive, then we would not have gone to court. Preventing court involvement was a major reason for having the Living Trust drafted in the first place. This cost the family thousands of dollars and months of a delay that could have been avoided.

If you have a Living Trust you might be asking, how was she able to remove the house to begin with? How do I prevent this from happening to me?

Well, the answers are, that you can remove from or transfer into your Living Trust as frequently as you like. Why would you do that? Let’s say that you sold your house. Clearly you would want to remove that asset. A little further down the road, you buy a new home and you need to transfer that new property into the Trust.

The moral of the story is: The best advice that anyone can give to someone with a Living Trust, is to have that Trust reviewed regularly, every couple of years. Any change in the Trust, i.e. adding or removing a property, is cause for an update. This will keep your plan safe, and will also keep you up to date should there be any changes in the law that might affect you.

Webster’s New World Finance and Investment Dictionary defines Estate Planning as: “Creating an orderly plan to disperse a person’s assets upon the person’s death.” Drafting a proper Estate Plan, one that is specific and right for you, can also protect your quality of life should you become incapable of making decisions for yourself. In addition, it can free your loved ones from the burden of having to decide what is best for you and your Estate.

So if Estate Plans are so great, why statistically speaking does less than a third of the population have them? Typically most people love the idea of an Estate Plan, but they fall victim to one or more of five common misconceptions.

Misconception number one: Estate Plans are only for the wealthy. Not true – Estate Plans are for anyone who has assets that they wish to protect and/or pass on after death. Let’s face it – regardless of your net worth, your money and assets are important to you. You’ve worked hard for them, and you deserve to decide what happens to them. If you die intestate, which is to say without having a proper Will, then your assets are left to the mercy of State laws – the result of which may lead to fighting among family members and the potential for an expensive and unnecessary court battle.

Misconception number two: Everyone knows my wishes. Even if you have discussed your wishes with family and friends, not everyone is clear on them. It’s kind of like the game of telephone where you whisper into one player’s ear, they in turn whisper into the next person’s ear, and so forth and so forth, until the last player repeats back to you something completely different from what it was that you originally said. Adding grief, loss, and unresolved issues into the mix just adds to the possibility of further distortion in regards to your final wishes. On the other hand, you can avoid this with clear, properly drafted, lawful, and indisputable instructions.

Misconception number three: Everything will take care of itself. This is a big one because really, it isn’t a misconception at all. In reality, if you do absolutely nothing to prepare, then everything will in fact resolve itself in time. The question is whether the resolution will reflect your intentions, and also, just how big of a strain will be left on the surviving members of your family?

Misconception number four: Estate Plans are too expensive. True, Estate Plans aren’t inexpensive, but in most cases the cost is a mere fraction of the value of the assets which you are hoping to protect. If that wasn’t true, then you wouldn’t be considering an Estate Plan to begin with. It’s as simple as that. Let me make this analogy – No one likes paying costly auto repairs, so why do we pay them? We pay them for the purpose of security. We pay because we don’t want to find ourselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. We pay because we have invested a lot of money into our automobile, and we want to get the best return on our investment. Estate plans aren’t so different. You, yourself are the greatest investment – why wouldn’t you want to invest in your own security? The security of knowing that your loved ones will be provided for, that your home will not become a tax burden for someone else, or that your most treasured asset will go where you intended without compromise or complication.

Misconception number five: I want an Estate Plan but I can draft it myself. Again, this is another one that isn’t really a misconception. You can draft an Estate Plan, and if you have the knowledge, experience, and the legal know how, then there is a good chance it will turn out fine. On the other hand, if you aren’t an experienced attorney, why would you gamble with your Estate? Let’s bring back that mechanic analogy for a moment. If you are not an experienced auto mechanic, then there is a reason why you’ve chosen to pay someone else to repair your car – because you want it to run properly. Estate plans that aren’t drafted correctly and in accordance with current laws can be disputed, often leading to costly probate proceedings. As our office paralegal once said, “it’s better to pay once for a good Estate Plan than to have others pay later for a messy Probate.”

Taking the time to meet with an experienced Estate Planning attorney, and drafting a plan according to your wishes and your instructions, can be the difference between knowing your wishes will be fulfilled as you intended, or hoping they will. Between leaving your family provided for and able to grieve properly, or leaving them uncertain, stressed out and potentially at odds with one another. Between preserving what you feel is the dignity of life, or trusting that someone else knows your needs better than you. Meeting with an experienced attorney, asking questions, being a part of the planning process, and having an Estate Plan drafted properly means security for you and your family. It is no misconception that you and your loved ones deserve as much.