Irrevocable Trusts - Does an Irrevocable Trust Get Included in Your Estate?
The answer to this questions depends on your relationship to the Irrevocable Trust:
- Trustmaker - If you're the one who has created and funded the Irrevocable Trust and one of the purposes of the trust is to exclude the trust assets from your estate, then, assuming that the trust agreement has been properly drafted and administered, the trust assets won't be included in your estate. However, some Irrevocable Trusts aren't designed to remove the trust assets from the Trustmaker's estate, and so the assets will be included.
- Trustee - If you've been appointed to serve as the Trustee of an Irrevocable Trust, then, assuming that the trust agreement has been properly drafted and administered, the trust assets won't be included in your estate.
- Beneficiary - If you're the beneficiary of an Irrevocable Trust, then whether or not the trust assets will be included in your estate depends on the terms of the trust agreement. If it has been properly drafted as a generation skipping trust, then the assets won't be included in your estate. If not, then the assets will be included in your estate. And, depending on the value of the trust assets, it could hold both generation skipping assets and non generation skipping assets, which means that part will be included in your estate and part won't.
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