          
          
          
          Irrevocable Living Trusts:
          
          
               A living trust also may be expressly created as
          irrevocable, denying a grantor the ultimate control,
          once the trust is created, over the transferred trust
          assets.
               As a protection against asset attachment by the
          grantor's creditors, this is virtually perfect because
          the grantor no longer holds title to the property nor
          has ability to re-acquire it.  The only possibility of
          successful attack by creditors might occur if the
          transfer can be proven to be fraudulent in some way.
               Irrevocability is the unique feature of this type
          of trust, and a court finding irrevocability will
          usually shield trust assets from the grantor's
          creditors.  But irrevocability is also the major
          disadvantage - if the grantor's circumstances change,
          the trust cannot be changed to meet them.
               Under the law, the income and assets of a
          revocable or irrevocable trust are subject at least to
          one-time state and federal death taxes at the grantor's
          death.  The trust property is included in the grantor's
          gross estate for tax purposes.
               This means the fair market value of all estate
          assets above $600,000 - the federal estate tax
          exemption amount - are taxed on a 1994 scale of from 37
          percent up to 60 percent, the exact tax percentage
          depending on the total size of the deceased's taxable
          estate, payable within nine months after death.  But
          importantly, trusts can be arranged so that upon the
          subsequent deaths of named beneficiaries or their
          heirs, further death taxes are avoided, a savings for
          the eventual trust beneficiaries, although this helpful
          aspect is often remote in time.
               When you consider the estimate that between now
          and the year 2020, personal estates valued in excess of
          ten trillion (with a "t") dollars
          ($10,000,000,000,000.00) are projected to pass to
          heirs, you realize the enormity of the need to avoid
          estate taxes as much as possible.  We will talk more
          about this in a moment.
          
          
          
