Domestic Trusts

0pp - Item # Add-On Draft Provisions
Married Person Qualified Terminable Interest Property Revocable Living Trust

The Married Person Qualified Terminable Interest Property (QTIP) RLT provides essentially the same benefits as the Single Person Basic Trust plus a few additional, important features. It is a Sole-Grantor trust designed for a married individual to hold and manage, as an individual grantor, his/her sole and separate property and any one-half undivided interest in marital (community & tenants-in-common) jointly-held property in the trust.

The tax-planning feature of this trust is that if the grantor's estate value exceeds the exemption equivalent amount, then such entire excess amount may qualify for the marital deduction (the QTIP portion) and must be held IN TRUST for the lifetime benefit of the grantor's spouse (primarily for the distributions of income required for the benefit of the surviving spouse). In addition, a value up to the current exemption equivalent amount (in the year of the grantor's death) will pass estate-tax-free under the unified credit, and such amount may also be held in trust for the spouse's benefit if desired. However, neither the QTIP portion nor the credit shelter portion are under the surviving spouse's control and cannot be distributed to the surviving spouse's heirs unless the grantor permits it. At the death of the surviving spouse, the QTIP portion, as well as the credit shelter portion, shall be allocated and distributed precisely as the grantor had previously arranged through the provisions of the trust.

It should be noted that the QTIP portion is in the spouse's estate (not the grantor's estate) for estate tax purposes. That feature can create an additional, valuable estate tax planning strategy. If the personal estate of the grantor's spouse was less than the current federal exemption equivalent amount at the time of death of grantor's spouse, then any of the remaining unified credit of the spouse's estate could be applied, by an election of spouse's personal representative (or in some cases by the grantor's trustee), against the potential transfer tax liability of the grantor's QTIP trust estate.

$400.00