When you have personal property, such as a business or inheritance, safeguarding these assets is a priority. If you are planning a marriage, consider protecting your property in the event of divorce.
While you may not want to think about the end of your marriage before it begins, the best way to ensure future control over your assets is to protect them before they become community property.
Consider the following types of trusts to secure your personal property.
Safeguard inheritances with trusts
If you have an inheritance or other property given to you by family members, keeping those items in a trust is one way to prevent anyone from taking those assets. If you are the beneficiary of an inheritance trust, the assets in the trust still belong to your family member. The advantage to this is that since the property does not belong to you, it is not considered an asset to divide in your divorce.
Installment deposits received from trusts during your marriage should get deposited into individual checking accounts. Putting money from a separate source into a joint account may be subject to division.
You can also put businesses into a trust
If you own a business before marriage, putting it into a trust can protect it from division in divorce. As with all revocable and irrevocable trusts, the trust owns the company and is not an asset in your divorce.
Protecting your assets by establishing trusts before marriage ensures that you always have control over your property no matter what happens in the future.