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Living Trust for Second Marriages & Blended Families in New York - Davies Law Firm · BSPE Legal Marketing Podcast

• 0:00
  Living Trust for Second Marriages and Blended Families in New York When you remarry and bring children from a previous relationship into the picture, your estate plan faces a challenge that a simple will often cannot fully solve.
• 0:12
  In New York, leaving all your assets outright to a surviving spouse gives that spouse complete ownership, including the freedom to use, sell, or redirect those assets through their own estate plan after your death.
• 0:24
  This means children from a prior marriage have no guaranteed right to receive anything from the surviving spouse, even if you fully intended them to inherit.
• 0:32
  A properly funded revocable living trust can create two separate layers of benefit from the same pool of assets, establishing a lifetime interest for your spouse and a protected remainder interest for your children.
• 0:43
  The trust can hold a marital residence and allow the surviving spouse to live there for life, while making clear that the spouse cannot leave that home to someone else through their own estate plan.
• 0:52
  The trust can also pay the spouse all income from trust investments and authorize the trustee to distribute principal for defined purposes like health care, guided by an objective standard that gives your children a benchmark for review.
• 1:04
  When the surviving spouse passes away, the trustee distributes whatever principal remains directly to your named children as remainder beneficiaries, entirely outside the surviving spouse's estate plan.
• 1:15
  Unadopted stepchildren receive no inheritance rights under New York intestacy law based solely on the stepparent relationship, but a trust can include them by name or through clear beneficiary language.
• 1:26
  New York law also grants a surviving spouse an elective share, which means the trust must be carefully drafted and funded to account for that spousal right while still protecting the children's inheritance.
• 1:37
  Beyond protecting beneficiaries, a properly funded living trust keeps assets outside the probate estate, meaning a successor trustee can administer those assets without waiting for a court to appoint an executor.
• 1:48
  A contested will in Surrogate's Court can delay distributions for months or even years, while trust-owned assets administered by a successor trustee can move forward under the trust terms without that delay.
• 1:59
  Executor commissions under New York law begin at five percent of the first one hundred thousand dollars received and paid out, and avoiding probate on trust-owned assets removes them from that commission calculation entirely.
• 2:11
  A QTIP marital trust structure may also be worth exploring where estate tax planning matters, allowing the marital deduction to apply to assets the spouse cannot redirect to other beneficiaries.
• 2:22
  The power to amend or revoke the trust belongs only to you as the trustor, so when you die that power ends, and the surviving spouse cannot change the terms to redirect your children's inheritance.
• 2:33
  At Davies Law Firm, attorney Frederick P Davies and attorney William P Davies work with remarried New Yorkers to coordinate trust terms, asset titles, and beneficiary designations so the plan serves both a surviving spouse and children from a prior marriage.
• 2:48
  Contact Davies Law Firm, located at 210 E Fayette St, Syracuse, NY 13202, United States, by calling 315, 472, 6511 to schedule a consultation with our experienced legal team today.