Are You Leaving Your Retirement Account At Risk Due To Poor Planning?

You’ve spent your entire life building up your retirement account. It may even be the biggest asset you’ll leave behind for the people you love.

If that’s the case, you may want to consider creating a special trust designed specifically to receive your retirement account assets in the event of your death.

If you leave your retirement account outright to the people you love, simply by naming them as beneficiaries on your retirement account rather than through a special trust, here are the risks:

1. Some studies indicate that 80% of retirement account beneficiaries immediately liquidate the account and frivolously spend the assets (and on top of using the assets in ways you might find objectionable, they also lose significant tax benefits for these assets you’ve worked so hard to create);
2. If your beneficiary is married and does not properly handle the retirement assets you leave behind, and then gets divorced, your hard-earned assets could end up in the hands of the future ex-spouse of your beneficiary;
3. If you are in a second marriage situation with children from a prior marriage, you may be setting your spouse and children up for conflict after you are gone, due to the way you have planned (or not planned) for the passage of your retirement account.
4. If your beneficiary is ever in a situation where he or she has creditors or may have to file bankruptcy, and you’ve left your retirement account to him or her without a special trust, your retirement account would go to satisfy those creditors first.

Here’s the good news.It’s not hard to protect your retirement account for your beneficiaries with the right planning. We use a variety of special trusts to ensure that the retirement assets you’ve worked so hard to build up throughout your life are passed on to the people you love so that those assets are totally protected from a future divorce, creditors, and bankruptcy, and so that they do not create conflict for your loved ones.

If you have a significant retirement account whose designated beneficiary is your spouse or children, or even your regular revocable living trust, call us to have your planning reviewed immediately.

This article is a service of Legacy Counsel PLC, a trusts and estates law firm in Saint Joseph, Michigan.We develop trusting relationships with families for life.If you’re ready to begin planning what you’d like to happen in case of unfortunate emergency, or even your death, schedule a Life and Legacy Planning Session today. We can help you make plans for how you want to provide for your loved ones when you can’t be there. Normally, a Life and Legacy Planning Session is $750, but when you mention this article and are one of the first three families to book an appointment this month, we’ll waive that fee.