Joan Rivers’s Will Offers a Lesson on the Benefits of a Trust in Estate Planning

ABC News reveals some of the details of Joan Rivers’s will this week.  The will was filed with the courts on December 5.  The most significant detail being that she employed a trust as part of her estate plan and, therefore, none of the details of her estate – her assets, their value, or who gets what – will likely ever be disclosed.

Any will must be filed with a probate court after one dies.  And as a result of the filing, it becomes a public record, which can be read by anyone, including the media.  And because the probate administration is public, one’s assets and beneficiaries are also matters of public record.   That can result in a lot of unwanted publicity. Wisely, Ms. Rivers chose a different path.

Many people, like Ms. Rivers, don’t want the details of their affairs becoming a matter of public record after they die, so they will employ trusts and other techniques to avoid the publicity inherent in the probate process.  Unlike a will, a trust agreement does not have to be filed with a probate court.  Trust administration typically remains a private affair, the details of which are known only by the trustees and the trust beneficiaries.   And trusts aren’t just for the wealthy or celebrities.  A trust can play an important part of an estate plan as long as it makes sense in one’s particular situation.  As one can see with the will of Ms. Rivers, maintaining privacy by itself can be a significant benefit.

Rivers died on September 4, after she suffered from cardiac arrest during an earlier medical procedure.

Please read the entire article here.