Oklahoma Estate Planning for the Married Couple —-> 1 Family Trust vs. 2 Separate Trusts, one for each Spouse

Usually, the threshold estate planning question is: Do I need an Oklahoma revocable trust or an Oklahoma Last Will and Testament?

Once that question is answered and the answer is an “Oklahoma revocable trust”, the question becomes ___ Does a married couple need one joint trust or one trust for each spouse? 

The answer to this question is relatively easy for me:  Almost always it is a joint trust.  However, there are circumstances where a married couple can use a trust for each spouse more effectively than they can use one joint spouse. Below is a table summarizing the benefits of a joint trust versus separate trusts for each spouse:

1 Family Trust  2 Separate Trusts
Easy to administer during the couple’s life since there is only trust rather than two separate trusts Allows a couple to maintain separate assets to comply with a pre-nuptial agreement
Easy to track and transfer property when there is only one trust to which to make transfers In a few cases where the marital estate is very very large (probably at least valued at $23,000,000.00), there may be some federal estate tax planning benefit to each spouse having their own trust
Less expensive and less complex to administer when the first spouse passes away Protecting inheritance property.  If one spouse is going to inherit property, having a separate trust for the inheriting spouse allows the inheritance property to [usually] remain separate from the marital estate

 

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."