As parents you hope that you will always be able to provide for your children, but what will happen to your kids if something happens to you? Creating a Children’s Trust insures that your kids will be taken care of, even if you can’t be there to care for them yourself.
What your children need will depend on any number of factors, including their age, level of responsibility, and interests. Luckily, there are as many options for children’s trusts as there are kids and situations.
Parents of younger children would likely want to set up a common trust, which allows your Trustee to provide for your children according to their needs as they grow, as well as make sure their guardians have the means to create the most loving and least disruptive transition environment possible. Parents of teenagers may choose to create individual trusts for each child, encouraging fiscal responsibility with provisions to make distributions gradually over time, and by allowing them to be co-trustee of their trust at a certain age. And parents of adult children should think about protecting those grown children from divorce or lawsuits with a trust in which the beneficiary has maximum access to trust income, while still under the umbrella protection of the trust as a separate legal entity.
Whatever your situation, your attorney can help you find a way to comfortably provide for your children—and to continue to provide for them when they will need you most.
