If you want to protect your privacy, and the privacy of your heirs or beneficiaries when transferring assets after death, you need to talk with our Overland Park trust attorneys. Our law firm, Parman & Easterday, can provide the assistance that you need to develop a plan for the transfer of your wealth that will not result in all of your details becoming available to the public.
To find out more about the ways our Overland Park trust attorneys can help you ensure that your loved ones are able to receive an inheritance without everyone finding out about all of the assets being transferred, give us a call today.
How Our Overland Park Trust Attorneys Help You Protect Privacy
Our Overland Park trust attorneys can help you protect your privacy by arranging for you to be able to transfer your wealth without that transfer taking place through the probate process.
When assets transfer through the probate process, your privacy is undermined. The probate process is a court process, and thus court records are created. Except in limited circumstances when records are sealed, the court records will become a matter of public record.
Because there is an entire courtroom hearing about the transfer of wealth — and because a court record is created — details about your estate can become public knowledge. This could include details about who inherits your assets. It can also include details about what kinds of assets are being transferred to new owners as well as the value of those assets.
Many people would prefer that all of these details not become public knowledge. In order to prevent this from happening, however, you must transfer assets outside of the probate process. There are different ways to do that, but one of the best and most effective ways is to create a trust so that the assets can pass through the trust administration process and avoid the public record exposure of probate.
The trust administration process does not require going to court in order to facilitate the transfer of money and property, except in very limited circumstances where problems arise and legal proceedings end up being initiated. In a typical trust administration process, the trust administrator is able to complete the required steps to facilitate the transfer of assets. Court hearings that create a public record never become necessary.
Without court hearings, no court records are created. The trustee handles everything privately with the heirs and beneficiaries and privacy is preserved as a result.
The trust administration process can also help to keep things private in the event of incapacity. When assets are transferred to a living trust, the trust creator is able to name a backup trustee. That backup trustee can immediately begin to manage assets in the event that you become incapacitated and unable to care for the trust assets on your own. This can allow you to avoid incapacity proceedings in which the court must appoint a guardian.
When the court appoints a guardian to manage your affairs when you are incapacitated, the court remains involved in overseeing what the guardian does. Many people do not like this intrusion into the guardian’s management of their financial assets and would prefer to transfer assets to a trust so they can be managed privately by a chosen backup trustee.
Getting Help from Our Overland Park Trust Attorneys
The Parman & Easterday trust attorneys in our Overland Park office can help you with the creation of a living trust so you can facilitate the transfer of your assets outside of the probate process. By transferring assets through trust administration instead of probate, you can maximize the chances that the transfer will happen outside of court. This can help you to ensure privacy.
We can also provide you with invaluable assistance in understanding all of the different tools that you can use to facilitate the private transfer of assets to heirs or beneficiaries. To find out more about all of the different ways that our firm can help you, join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call today at (405) 843-6100 or (913) 385-9400 or contact us online to learn more.
