Everything to the girlfriend

13 Sept 2023 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:27

In this brief segment, the speaker recounts a personal example where, after a 50‑year marriage, a surviving husband revoked his family’s revocable trust following his wife’s death and transferred all assets to his girlfriend. He emphasizes that such outcomes are common because a revocable trust can be entirely dismantled by the surviving spouse after the first spouse’s death. The speaker advises that the only reliable safeguard against this scenario is to embed an irrevocable trust within the original revocable trust, thereby restricting the surviving spouse’s ability to unilaterally redirect assets.

My parents were married 50 years and within 2 years of my mom's death, he revoked the family trust and gave everything to his girlfriend. Yes, that happens frequently. A revocable trust can be completely done away with by the surviving spouse. After the first spouse dies, the surviving spouse can do whatever they want to with the remaining trust. The only way to protect against this is to create an irrevocable trust within the original revocable trust.