FAQ

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and here's some suggestions when you want to name your child as a beneficiary. If it's a minor child, then you need to take a few more steps before you just put that minor's child's name on a beneficiary form such as life insurance or an IRA. The reason you need to take some extra steps is because if a minor child inherits more than $25,000 in Florida, a guardianship has to be established for them, and that is expensive because you have to pay for guardian's fees, and a guardian's attorney's fees. And the bad thing about it is that at 18, the child gets whatever's left in the guardianship and that can be a large lump sum all at one time, which can be a disaster. So instead of that, you need to, in your will, set up a trust for your child. This is a sub trust, which is part of your last will and testament and in that sub trust name someone, a trustee, to manage that child's money until they get older.

And one of the things that you can put in there is that the trust money will be used to pay for their education and when they turn 18, that can be university or college education or maybe they want to get vocational training type of education. And then once they get to be about 25 or 30, then they can receive lump sums of money. This puts someone responsible in charge that you have picked out as to be the trustee and it delays the minor child from getting lots of money until they're older and they've matured. And it will avoid the need for a guardianship.

I'm an attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and you need to know about how to name a special needs person as beneficiary of anything, whether it's your will, or your life insurance policy, or your IRA. Number one, you do not want to name them individually. You want to instead make sure that you have set up a special needs trust underneath your last will and testament. And you name the trust as the beneficiary. The assets that you leave to the special needs trust for the benefit of that special needs person will not be counted against them when they have to qualify for Medicaid, or any other type of government benefit they may need. 

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and you need to know how to protect an inheritance for an elderly parent or to leave money to take care of your parents. After I talk with a family, a lot of times, I will ask them the question, "If you died suddenly tomorrow, would you need to take care of your parents or leave some money to take care of your parents?" A lot of times the answer is yes. The issue there is, a lot of times, elderly parents go on to become very ill and, if they do, they may not have enough assets. Typically, in this scenario, they do not have a lot of assets of their own, and they will need to qualify for Medicaid healthcare down the road. 

For example, if an elderly parent needed to go to a nursing home but they could not pay for it out of their own assets, they would need to qualify for Medicaid. However, if you're the child leaving them an inheritance, that inheritance could disqualify them from Medicaid unless we set up a special needs trust for the parents. The special needs trust will allow the inheritance that you leave to them to not be counted as their asset, and it will not disqualify them from Medicaid. 

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to protect an inheritance for a special needs person. Whenever we have a special needs beneficiary, our biggest concern is to make sure that when they receive their inheritance, it doesn't disqualify them from any kind of government benefit that they may receive later, such as Medicaid for their health care.

What you do is you set up a special needs trust for that beneficiary and that is a trust that is a sub-trust under your last will and testament and the inheritance goes to that sub-trust. It goes to that special needs trust for their benefit. You name someone that you trust as trustee to be in charge of the special needs trust. That is a person who will manage the money for the special needs person and the trustee can use the assets of the special needs trust for the benefit of that special needs person without disqualifying them from Medicaid.

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and you need to know how to protect an inheritance for someone who is maybe drug addicted, or addicted to alcohol, or just spends money like it's water flowing through their fingers. In these kinds of cases, when I sit with a family and talk to them, again, we need to come up with solutions to help them leave money to these types of beneficiaries, but not in a way that it will help them hurt themselves, potentially, or cause a problem. 

What we recommend is setting up a trust for that beneficiary. This can be underneath a will. It's a sub-trust and a last will and testament, or it can be a sub-trust in a revocable trust. In the trust for the beneficiary we allow the trustee to manage money for the beneficiary, and sometimes that's for their lifetime. When there isn't really a lot of assets, and so the family is concerned about the expense of a trust, one of the answers that the family could choose is to set up an annuity for that beneficiary. This allows the inheritance to purchase an annuity, which will provide the beneficiary a monthly check for the rest of their life, and they cannot assign it, they can't use it as collateral, they can't give it away to anyone, and they don't outlive it. The nice thing about that is the trustee has not involvement with the beneficiary, which, again, is sometimes a real concern with family members about who's going to be in charge. Annuities can get a bad rap, but sometimes they can be a good solution for this type of problem. 

I am attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know how to protect a disabled spouse, or a potentially disabled spouse.

When a couple comes to my office, and they're in the situation where one of them is ill or possibly has a degenerative type of disease and is going to become more ill, then we're very worried if the healthy spouse pre-deceases the other one. Because if the healthy spouse pre-deceases, then very typically all of the joint assets will be inherited by the spouse that is ill. And if the spouse becomes so ill, for example, that they need to go to a nursing home, then those assets are gonna be used to pay for a nursing, and many times there really isn't enough assets to be able to afford a nursing home, and we need to help this family, potentially, plan for one of the spouses to qualify for medicaid.

So in this situation, the healthy spouse, we will often write into their last will and testament a special needs trust for the benefit of their spouse. So if in fact they did pre-decease leaving the assets to the less healthy spouse, then those assets will be protected by the special needs trust, and it will not be counted as an asset of the surviving spouse, so that the surviving spouse could potentially qualify for Medicaid if they needed to.

I am attorney, Amber Jade F. Johnson. You need to know how to protect your child's inheritance. One of the things that I see in my office that I wish I could prevent is when people leave an inheritance directly to a minor. In other words, they leave a life insurance policy that names a minor as a beneficiary.

In Florida, if you leave over $25,000 to a minor, you have to set up a guardianship for that minor. There has to be a legal court appointed guardian to manage their property, and that is expensive, because not only are you paying for a guardian, you're also paying for a guardian's attorney bills as well. The guardianship ends at 18, which means that whatever's left at 18, the child can get lump sum. Sometimes it's a really large amount of money all at 18, and that could be really bad idea.

Much better to set up some kind of trust in your will and that is a sub-trust underneath your last will and testament it's built into it, and name a trustee to manage the child's money while they're growing up to put them through college once they turn 18 or go to some vocational training to get started in some kind of profession or an occupation, and then give them lump sums when they're old enough and they're mature enough to get lump sums. For example, like half at 25, the rest at 30, the rest at 35, or you can do as many bites at the apple as you wish. But that way, your child has a chance to mature into the money, you don't have to pay for an expensive guardianship, and you've left someone in charge of their money that you trust.

Hi I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know about naming people to settle your estate. Sometimes we have talent on the bench, so to speak, and when I asked the clients, "Who would you name after you passed away to settle your estate?" And what I mean by that is the person who's going to figure out what the assets are, pay the last bills, get your final taxes filed. Who would you name?

Sometimes my clients will want to name three people, and I will tell you that is a bad idea. Because it's hard enough to get two people to agree, it's pretty impossible to get three people to agree on everything all the time. So if you are tempted to name three people, I recommend just narrow it down two and put the third one as a back up. And I have seen so many arguments, especially between siblings, because they all think they're right, that I will tell you if a client came in to my office and said, "I want to name all four children to settle my estate", I would say, "No. I'm not going to let you do that." And I would send them away to tell them to think about and come back with two or one because it's going to be a lot more workable and save a whole lot of money for the family, because there'll be a lot less arguing. 

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to avoid paying unnecessary taxes. And I'm going to talk to you about being charitable. When a client family comes to me and they say, "We want to draft our last will and testament or our revocable trust," whichever document they end up using, and we want to include a charitable gift. One of the first things that I look for in their estate assets is if they have an IRA, an individual retirement account or a 401k or four or three B, any kind of tax deferred account. Because what I want to do is to make sure that if we can take the charitable gift from that account, the reason why is if the children inherit an IRA, they're going to pay ordinary income taxes on it, just like their parents did when they pulled out money. But when a charity inherits an IRA or a part of one, the charity doesn't pay taxes.

So the charity gets the full benefit of every dollar because no taxes come out. So if you are going to make a charitable gift in your last will and testament, talk to your attorney about possibly funding it from a tax deferred retirement account. Another thing that you can look at in terms of being charitable while you're alive is if you have an IRA, and if you are at the age where you are required to take the money out, and you also are charitable every year to an organization or to a church, you can arrange with the IRA company and your charity to make a direct contribution to the charity. And the charity will not pay taxes and neither will you. So this is a nice way, again, to use every dollar of that money, but do it in a charitable gift.

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know if you really need a will. The answer to that is if you're over 18, yes you need a will and here's why.

Especially in today's society, we have a lot of families with blended families or blended marriages, and we have second spouses, third spouses, but let me give you an example of one of the train wrecks that I have seen. 

Let's start with an example of a couple, married couple, and the wife has children from her previous marriage, and she gets married to her second husband. The second husband does not legally adopt the children. That wife and the husband are in a car accident. The wife was killed instantly, and the husband died one hour later in the hospital. Neither wife nor husband had a will. 

Well, when you don't have a will, Florida statutes fill one in for you. They have a will written for you and in this case, all of the assets went to the husband's relatives because he died last and I am certain this was not the intention of the wife or the husband but without a will, that's what the Florida law filled in. 

So if you want your intentions, then you need to spell them out in your last will and testament.

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson. I have a Wills, Trust, Estate and Probate practice in the Orlando area. I've been practicing in Florida for 25 years, and I love my job. My clients are wonderful, and every time I sit down with a client we work through their family issues, and I'm able to help them. It's a wonderful feeling at the end of the day that I have helped my client get their affairs in order, I have helped them put their intentions in place, and I've helped them protect their family's inheritance. 

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and you need to know about powers of attorney and signing for someone at the hospital. Whenever you get a durable power of attorney, what you're doing is you're naming someone as an agent to be able to handle your financial affairs for you. And when you act as agent, you are acting on someone's behalf, but you are not taking personal liability. And that's important, especially in situations that I've seen many times in my office where a child, an adult child typically, will take a parent to the hospital. They are stressed out. They are very worried about their parent. They whisk the parent into the ER, and while the parent's in the ER, they bring the paperwork to the child and put it under their nose to get them to sign it. And the child signs it, but what the child doesn't understand is that they've just signed to be personally liable for mom or dad's hospital bill. 

A much better situation would be if the child signed as agent, because mom or dad had set up a power of attorney naming the child as agent. So for example, if the child was John Doe, he would sign John Doe as Agent. That way he's not taking on the personal liability of mom or dad's hospital bill, but he's getting the job accomplished of being able to sign the paperwork on their behalf.

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and you need to know about putting your children on the deed to your house. I will also call this capital gains tax train wrecks I have seen, and what happens is when you put the name of your ... or your children on the deed of your house, you are gifting them a part of the home, and when you gift someone an asset, they get what's called your basis.

Your basis in the property is the purchase price, and let me give you an example of how this works. If your mom put your name on the deed to her house and she paid $100,000 for the home 20 years ago, but now that home has appreciated to $200,000, when she put your name on the deed, it's a gift, and you get mother's purchase price basis of $100,000 on the house.

Now, I'm going to simplify the example from here just to make it easy to understand, but if Mom passed away the next week, and you the child were going to sell the house a week later for $200,000, the IRS would say, "Hmm, you have $100,000 of profit," and you will owe capital gains tax on that $100,000. You can end up paying $20,000 of capital gains tax just because your mom put your name on the deed. Now, if your mother instead had left you the home in her will and you inherited it, you get what's called stepped-up basis, which is fair market value at the date of death. In other words, you would inherit the $200,000 house at a $200,000 fair market value, and when you sold it a week later for $200,000, there is no profit, no capital gains tax.

So, I've seen many unfortunate situations where clients were trying to avoid a probate, which is the county court process to transfer assets from a deceased person to a beneficiary, that would have cost maybe 2 or $3,000, and they were trying to avoid that, and they put their kids' names on the deed, and it ended up costing the kids tens of thousands of dollars in capital gains tax. So I do not recommend adding your children's names to your deed. Instead, let them inherit.

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and you need to know about adding your children to your bank accounts.

One thing that you need to be aware is, if you put your children on as a joint owner on your bank account, if your child gets into a car accident and is sued, their creditor could potentially come after your account because their name is on it. Also, if your child is a joint owner on the bank account and you pass away, then that child, as the joint owner, will own everything in the account, and they may not want to share with their brothers and sisters. And I have seen that in my office, and that probably isn't your intention. So, I don't recommend that you put children on your bank accounts.

The number one reason I see clients do it is because they think, "Well, if I get sick, then my children are going to need to be able to get to my bank account to pay the bills." The solution is to get a durable power of attorney at an attorney's office and name your children as your agent on the power of attorney, and it will say that if something happens to you, then they will be able to access your bank account to pay your bills.

This enables you to take care of the situation if you become ill and at the same time avoid your children's creditors and make sure that if you do pass away that your bank account can be controlled by your will.

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know what to do if you own property in another country. The first thing is you do not want to try to include those assets under your United States last will and testament or revocable trust. When you own property in another country, you need to have estate planning documents, such as a last will and testament, in the other country. Your United States will should be limited to the assets located in the United States of America. The reason for this is wills are not one-size-fits-all. It is very difficult to try to administer a United States will out of country or, for example, an out-of-country will in the United States. 

Many times there's translation costs and many times there's lots of questions about which law applies. You want to make sure your United States estate planning documents covers your United States assets and your out-of-country assets are covered by a last will and testament in the other country. 

Hi, I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and you need to know two ways to protect your family's inheritance, or we could call this "The wrong way to title your car". Most couples come into my office and they have their cars titled jointly. Which means, if one of them is on the highway and causes a 12 care pile up, and kills the baby, that that one is going to get sued as the driver of the vehicle, but the other spouse who is the other owner of the vehicle, gets sued as the owner of the vehicle. Which means that the creditor can reach all of their assets, whether they're individually owned by either one of them, or jointly owned together. In order to protect your family's inheritance, it's best to keep your cars titled solely in the name of the person who drives the vehicle. 

The second thing is to make sure that you always carry an umbrella. An umbrella policy is a rider on your auto insurance policy, and it provides an extra layer of protection over and above your basic auto insurance. This provides a nice buffer so that the creditor could not reach through and get to your savings account, or to your checking account, and potentially to your investment accounts, or second or third homes. It's a very simple way to protect your family's inheritance, keep and umbrella policy on your autos at all times, and keep those titles only in the name of the person who's going to drive the car. 

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and here are six suggestions to protect your family's inheritance. 

The first one is if you are going to purchase a second or a third home, for example, like a beach condo or a mountain cabin that you're going to rent out part of the season, or if you're going to start a business or invest in a family business, hold that type of investment in a limited liability company, an LLC, because it limits the liability. It does what it sounds like it does. That will protect your family's inheritance from potential creditors.

The second is use a revocable trust instead of a will. This will greatly reduce the cost of probate in Florida, and Florida is a high dollar probate state, which means it costs a lot of money to settle an estate when someone passes away.

Third, keep an umbrella policy on your automobiles. This gives you an extra layer of insurance that will protect your family's inheritance in the event that you have a car accident and you get sued.

Fourth, do a plan with a financial planner for your older years. Let me give you an example. Go to a financial planner, analyze your budget, your income, and your cash flow for every five years until you reach 100 years of age. Then look at it a second time and think about well, if I get a little sick, I'm going to need to spend some money on caregivers. If I get really sick, I'm going to have to pay for a nursing home. Help the financial planner work with you to figure out how you're going to pay those bills.

Number five. If you have a lot of assets, consider looking at long-term care insurance and buying a policy to help you pay for a nursing home. If you don't have that much in assets, then talk to an elder law attorney now so that you can learn the strategies for planning to get a family member qualified for Medicaid or yourself qualified for Medicaid if you ever needed it.

Number six. Pay off the mortgage on your homestead. Your homestead is highly, highly protected in Florida from creditors, and paying off your mortgage gives you a big nest egg that you could fall back on that is creditor protected.

I'm Attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and here's some suggestions for five things to do when you retire.

The first is to update or get a health care surrogate, a living will and a durable power of attorney. These are the three documents that we use if you become incapacitated and somebody needs to make decisions for you. For example, they need to make a health care decision for you or they need to be able to pay your bills or handle your bank accounts. 

The second is to update your will or get a will if you haven't gotten one before now. And you also need to go to an attorney and find out if you need a revocable trust. So discuss a will versus a revocable trust. Not everyone needs a revocable trust, but your attorney can help guide you to see if it's a good solution for you. 

The third thing is to talk to a financial planner and analyze your cashflow budget every five years until you're 100. This is so that you can have what I call plan A, B, C and D. Plan A is we are healthy and happy until the day we drop dead, and that's how we all want it to happen. But the truth is most of the time it doesn't work out that way. Plan B is you get a little bit sick so you're going to need to spend some money on a caregiver, maybe, some help in your name. Plan C is you get a lot sick. You're going to need significant care. Plan D is you need to go to a nursing home. You need to talk to a financial planner about these different stages and to help you analyze what your cashflow needs will be so that if it does happen to you, plan B, C or D, it's not nearly as scary because you've already planned for it.

Number 4. Keep or get an umbrella policy on your automobiles. Because older drivers have the same problems as teenage drivers. It doesn't matter, everyone thinks it's your fault if you get into an accident. And you have significant assets to protect. So keep an umbrella policy on your automobiles. 

And number 5, prepay your funeral arrangements. I know this sounds a little strange, but it is an extremely loving thing to do for your family to prepay your funeral arrangements because it is hard to do that when you- it's hard to do a funeral arrangement when you are grieving. 

Here's a bonus: write down these passwords. I know everyone tells you not to do it, but if you pass away, we need to be able to get to your online accounts many times and without a password, it leaves the family in a position where they are just stuck. And it costs a lot of money to be able to fix that problem-

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know whether your children will pay inheritance tax. I get asked this question a lot. For most people, about 98%, the answer is no. They will not pay inheritance tax. When I say that what I mean is they will not pay estate taxes because estate taxes are not due unless the estate is larger than $11 million. That is the exemption currently. If you have more than $11 million, the amount over and above that potentially will be subject to estate taxes. But almost none of us have those types of assets. 

Let me talk about a much more common tax which is when a child inherits an IRA, an Individual Retirement Account or a 401k or a 403(b) plan, any kind of retirement accounts that are tax deferred. When you as the account owner take out money from your IRA, you will pay ordinary income tax on it. I'm talking about a traditional IRA and not a ROTH IRA, which is not taxable. But a traditional IRA is. If you pass away and you leave your $100,000 traditional IRA to your children, when they inherit it and they start taking money out of it, they will pay ordinary income tax rates at their bracket, and yes, they will have to pay taxes on those types of accounts. 

I'm Attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know whether trusts will protect your assets. First, let's talk about a Revocable Trust. This is a document that we use in Florida instead of the Last Will and Testament as a client's main estate planning document. The reason that we use Revocable Trusts in Florida is they save the family a lot of money, they avoid a lot of the costs of probate. However, they do not protect your assets. The main reason for a Revocable Trust is the same as your Last Will and Testament, and that is to transfer your assets efficiently after your date of death. 

You do not look to a Revocable Trust to protect your assets. However, they can go a long way toward establishing trust for your children, and protecting your children's assets. In other words, your children's inheritance. You can set up sub-trusts under your Last Will and Testament, or Revocable Trust, whichever one you end up using, to protect your children's assets in the event that they divorce. You can make sure that their inheritance will not be split by the court with an ex-spouse. You can set up trusts to protect special needs beneficiaries and make sure that their inheritance will not disqualify them from Medicaid. You can set up trusts for elderly parents to make sure that they have funds to provide them with the lifestyle that you want them to have, but without disqualifying them from Medicaid if you ever needed it. And, you can set up trusts that will protect money from a beneficiary that has a drug problem, an alcohol addiction, or just simply spends money like it's flowing through their fingers like water. 

Those types of trusts you definitely protect your family's inheritance, and you can go a long way toward protecting their inheritance by simply doing some planning. 

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and I'm gonna talk to you about why living wills do not work and people get put on life support when they didn't want to be put on life support.

Whenever I draft a living will for our client, I have to tell them that really its purpose is to simply name someone who can make artificial life support decisions for them. In the event that they could not talk to the doctor themselves, or communicate at all with the doctor. So, it is in cases of when the client is incapacitated, they have named someone to make that health care decision of being put on life support or being taken off of it.

And, then I tell them don't get wrapped up too much about what the rest of the document says because no one pays any attention to it. The truth of the matter is, on a very practical basis, that when someone is in the hospital and you have to make the decision to put them on life support, the hospital is going to ask the family to make the decision every single time or whoever they've named in their living will. The hospital is going to do exactly what that person says to them. So, I don't care if you have 14 living wills that say, "Do not put me on life support," if your family members are standing there saying, "Do everything possible." 

They are going to put that patient on life support and it's for a very common sense reason. If the patient dies, who would sue the hospital? It would be those family members, so that's why the family members are listened to and that's why the hospital does exactly what they say. So, the most important thing that you can do, is express to the people that you name in your living will to make the decision exactly what you want them to do if that situation were to come up, so that they are carrying out your intentions. 

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know why you might need a revocable trust.

In Florida, we are a high dollar probate state. In other words, it costs a lot of money to settle your estate after your death. It costs a lot of money to transfer the assets to the beneficiaries after your death. In Florida, that expense can run about 6%, 3% for fees and costs and 3% for your personal representative's fee. So 6% of basically what you have in your checking, your savings, your non-retirement investment accounts can be a lot of money, can be $20,000.00, $30,000.00 dollars. When that amount is that high, you need to consider instead of using a last will and testament as your main estate planning document, use a revocable trust. The reason why is because it saves the family a lot of money. You are naming a successor trustee in the revocable trust, who you give the authority ahead of time to transfer the assets after your death without a court order. 

Now, having said that, this only works if you have good talent on your bench. So, in other words, if you can name a child or a brother or a sister or a good friend who you know is honest and conscientious and good with follow up and good with paperwork, then you have the perfect trustee and it will save a ton of money for your family to use a revocable trust as your main estate planning document in Florida.

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson, and you need to know about writing your own will.

I'm going to tell you first off that I make a lot more money on estates where there is a do-it-yourself will than on estates where an attorney has drafted the will. Unfortunately, it's very hard to get a do-it-yourself will right in Florida. We see wills that aren't signed, or the affidavit portion is signed, but the will part is not signed. Or, the notary signs as one of the witnesses, which you're not supposed to do. Or we had a doozy last week where the notary, not knowing any better, printed the names of the witnesses where the witnesses were supposed to sign. So there's about nine or ten ways that you can mess up a do-it-yourself will, just in signing it incorrectly. And that formality can be frustrating, but the reason it's there is it safeguards against fraudulent wills. And the Florida public policy is to make actually setting up your will slightly difficult because it prevents people from making up fake wills. So it's there to protect us.

The second thing is, it's easy to say the wrong thing in a do-it-yourself will. For example, in a Florida will, an attorney would never write, sell my home and divide it among my children. The reason they would never ever write that is because our homesteads have amazing creditor protection until you add the phrase, sell it. So a Florida attorney knows to always say, my home goes to my children equally, and never ever add the phrase, sell it.

So there's a lot of tricks, a lot of things that could go wrong, I recommend always go to an attorney to get your will written.

I'm attorney Amber Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know the most important document that you can have while you're alive, and it is a healthcare surrogate. This is the document where you name someone to make healthcare decisions for you. And we all will need somebody at some point in our life to make a healthcare decision for us.

This document is so important that I actually carry my mother's, mine, and my husband's in my car at all times to make sure that if anyone suddenly went to the hospital, I have that healthcare surrogate at hand. It is that important. So, when you go to see an attorney about getting a last will and testament, make sure that you also get your healthcare surrogate drafted at the same time. 

I'm  Attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know what is probate and how much does it cost. Probate is the County Court process for transferring assets from a deceased person to their living beneficiaries and it is done by court order. 

In Florida, the cost of probate runs about six percent. That is a good rule of thumb. It's three percent fees and cost and it's three percent for a personal representative's fee, together it's about six percent. 

Now, Florida is one of the high dollar probate States, in other words, it cost a lot of money to settle your estate in Florida after you pass away. 

When we have clients who have assets that will create a very high costly probate, then we encourage them to use a revocable trust as their main estate planning document instead of using a last will and testament. When you use a revocable trust, you're naming a trustee after your date of death and you are giving them the authority ahead of time to transfer those assets without a court order.

I'm attorney Amber Jade F. Johnson and you need to know what an LLC is and how you can use it to protect your family's inheritance. An LLC stands for limited liability company and it sounds like what it does, it limits liability from creditors. When a family owns a second or third home, in addition to their Florida homestead, often it is a beach condo or it is a mountain cabin that they rent out for part of a season.

And when you rent out property, then you're opening a door to be exposed to liability if anything goes wrong on the property. When you own the beach condo or the rental property or the mountain cabin that you rent out, under a limited liability company, under an LLC. Then if something were to happen on the property, and someone was injured, and they sue, that person is going to sue the owner of the property, which is the limited liability company.

They are limited to only being able to recover what the limited liability company owns, which means that they cannot reach around or through the limited liability company to get your other assets. So this protects you from that creditor being able to get more than just what the limited liability company owns. Whenever you own a business, most of the time it is set up in some type of business structure like a corporation or a limited liability company.

Anytime you own a second investment in that business, for example, if you Have to purchase expensive equipment like a doctor's office purchasing, for example, an MRI machine. The MRI machine will be held in a limited liability company which is separate from the limited liability company that owns the doctor's office building, which is separate from the limited liability company that owns the doctor's practice.

And again, the reason for the limited liability companies is to give you limited liability and make sure that the maximum that the creditor could recover are the assets in the limited liability company. However, there's one catch you must have a multi member limited liability company to be able to limit the liability in other words, you always have to have two partners or more in to get this protection for your family's inheritance.