In Red Oak, Texas, a trust is a setup under which property is possessed by one person or entity, to be used for the benefit of another.

You might want to set up a trust for a wide variety of reasons. It can be set up to ensure that a child will have money for college, for example, and that the child will only be able to use the money for that purpose.

If you want to set up a trust, you can make the beneficiary's use of the property as restricted or as permissive as you like. As a simple example, you might want to dictate that the beneficiary can only use the money for emergencies, or for basic living expenses. If the trust is carefully drafted, this is completely feasible.

If you want, you could establish a trust with no restrictions on how much money the trustee can spend from the trust, and let the beneficiary spend all the money on whatever they'd like. If this is what you want to do, that's fine- but if the beneficiary is a young adult with spendthrift habits, you obviously might want to take into consideration the fact that they could easily spend all the money on some pretty frivolous stuff.

What to Include in Any Red Oak, TX Trust

To establish a valid trust in Red Oak, Texas, 4 elements must be present. The first element is purpose - the property being held in trust must be there for a reason. Your trust can serve just about any lawful purpose you can think of.

Second, the trust must also name a trustee. The trustee is the person who is really going to administer the trust, and has possession and control of the property while it is the subject of the trust.

The third required element to make a valid trust is the beneficiary or beneficiaries. Because a trust, by definition, is set up to benefit someone or something, that entity must be identified in the trust. However, if the person(s) meant to benefit from the trust do not yet exist, they can still be valid beneficiaries, as long as they are part of an identifiable class of people, and can be easily identified if they are born. For example, you could set up a trust to benefit your grandchildren, even if you don't really have any grandchildren yet.

Lastly, the trust needs to really be composed of something. A trust document must name the money or property which is really being held in trust, which is recognized as the "corpus" or "body" of the trust.

Can A Red Oak, Texas Trust Drafting Attorney Help?

While the elements of a valid trust are relatively simple and easy to remember, drafting a trust that is sure to be carried out according to the wishes of the person making it can still be complex. For that reason, a good Red Oak, Texas attorney specializing in estate planning and the drafting trusts may prove invaluable.