Living Trusts Scams
The Arizona Attorney General has warned against Living Trust scams here.
Why should you choose a qualified Arizona living trust lawyer or attorney and not a trust salesman or document preparer?
A living trust is a lot like your car. You drive, you put in gas, you air up tires, some of you even change the oil or simple parts.
Cars used to be simple, however, cars have changed. They now use sophisticated computers and electrical parts like fuel injectors, oxygen sensors, etc. It takes a computer just to diagnose the problem.
Few of you are qualified to diagnose and repair your car. You may be able to perform some of the maintenance and make some of the repairs, but do you really know enough to work on the car yourself AND have the confidence that you didn't leave anything out.
A living trust is just like a car. They were simple in earlier days. However, there are so many technical rules governing the assets we own that qualified legal education is necessary. The law changes so often that a lawyer who knew how to "fix" a living trust a few years ago has missed important changes.
One specific decision is whether to make the trust the beneficiary of your IRA. Your wrong decision or wrong type of trust could be the mistake I saw that cost a family more than 20% of the inheritance in income taxes to the IRS. The result should have been different.
