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All InterActive Legal drafting systems include a Joint Revocable Trust, which operates as one combined estate planning document for a married couple or unmarried partners.  As a revocable trust, this document also is intended for incapacity planning, and includes provisions for managing trust assets for the benefit of the grantors (and later the surviving grantor) during lifetime, as well as provisions for disposing of property at each spouse’s death.  Because this document includes the estate plan for two separate individuals, it includes some drafting options that differ from those in a standard (one-grantor) revocable trust or last will and testament.

InterActive Legal drafting systems contain hundreds of different options, which can make using the program sometimes feel a bit overwhelming.  Many of the options won't be needed for most clients, but are nice to have when the situation arises.  So how can you best navigate the numerous drafting options in the program for your most common estate plans?

Powers of Appointment are one of the most common ways of adding flexibility to an estate plan. Allowing a beneficiary to redirect trust property at death or to direct a distribution from their trust to another person during lifetime can give the beneficiary a sense of control and involvement, and can also permit revisions to an estate plan when circumstances or law changes warrant. The exercise of a power of appointment, and in some cases its mere existence, can trigger tax consequences as well, some of which may be the reason for including the power itself, and others which could be unintended.

Estate planners often worry about minimizing or avoiding estate taxation at death, but gift taxation must be considered when making transfers during lifetime. Smaller gifts can avoid gift taxation due to the gift tax annual exclusion, which allows taxpayers to transfer relatively small amounts of property without any gift tax impact at all. However, if a gift is made to a trust, instead of outright, the gift tax result may differ. In most cases, gifts in trust are intended to qualify for the gift tax annual exclusion by giving the trust beneficiary a right of withdrawal over trust contributions - often referred to as a Crummey power, named after the court decision that first allowed this strategy.