Estate Planning Specialist, Joseph Balmer, digs deeper into the new Ohio Legacy Trust Law Act, and reveals how it can be used as a protection tool in the area of Family Law.
Effective March 27, 2013, the Ohio Legacy Trust Act became law.  With the passage of this act, Ohio became one of 14 states to allow self-settled trusts.  Ohio also, arguably, has one of the 4 or 5 strongest legacy trust act laws with respect to protecting one’s assets against creditors.  This repeals the long held English rule that one cannot set up a trust for himself or herself and protect his/her assets against one’s potential future creditors.
In a nutshell, with a Legacy Trust, a settlor can set up an irrevocable trust with a third party as the trustee.  The unique aspect of this trust is that, generally, a settlor’s creditors cannot attach trust property, even if the settlor is a trust beneficiary (both income and principle) and has retained powers over the trust property.  The caveat is that the trust settlement cannot be a fraudulent transfer.  Thus the transfer cannot be with the intent to defraud the settlor’s creditors.  Thus, the settlor needs to make sure … Read More... “Legacy Trust: A Premarital Planning Tool”