Background: Wife's mother has a revocable trust. My wife and her brother are successor trustees with my wife being first and the brother next if my wife can't act as successor. My wife is also executor of will. The trust states 50/50 distribution of assets in the estate. That's all good, no issues here. The main question is about the house. The house is in the trust (the deed lists the trust), ok that's fine. When the house is sold and the monies are distributed, I understand the escrow agent has to distribute the monies according to the trust, 50% to my wife, 50% to her brother. So here is the question Question: At the time when monies from the sale of the house are distributed, can the brother tell the escrow agent that he only wants x% of the monies? My wife and him have an agreement that since she is taking care of the mother, he said that he's in agreement to let her keep 65% and he'll keep 35% What I don't want to happen is for some way the extra 15% the brother is letting my wife keep is considered a "gift' Put aside things like emotion at the time of the closing and attitudes can change. With that aside, can one of the beneficiaries on the trust say they only want to keep x% and give the remaining to the other beneficiary? Does that make sense? Basically I want to make sure any extra monies my wife gets isn't considered a "gift" from the brother.
Great questions. Can't give legal advice over RU-vid but we offer Strategy Sessions at Lawvex to get you answers to questions like this. You can reach us at (888)308-7003. Happy to help.
This old man says if you put others needs ahead of yours make prudent decisions you can do whatever you want because ABA does whatever they want until April when they have to follow ABA Rule 1.1 and caveat the RLT Estate plan is too cheap to work.
