South Carolina Trust
and Estate Law Blog

File this under giving credit where it is due…… This is a fair article by Legal Zoom about when you should consider hiring a lawyer to help you with your legal matter. I note that even this article says that unless you know what you are doing, you should hire a lawyer to help you with your estate planning.

Get Article Here.

The life estate, or, an estate per autre vie, is at common law and from statute the ownership of land for the duration of a person’s life. In legal terms it is an estate in real property that ends at death, at which time there is either a “reversion” to the original owner, or an automatic conveyance to a remainderperson. The owner of a life estate is called a “life tenant”.

A life estate has its uses in estate planning. It can be used to allow the life tenant to continue to reside in a residence for the remainder of their lifetime, without easily allowing for the sale of the property by the life tenant. It is difficult to sell a life tenancy because the life tenant can only sell that which they actually own, which is the right to own a property for life. Most persons would not want to purchase such an interest in land.

A life tenancy can also potentially be utilized in medicaid planning, where a person who anticipates having expensive long term care needs in the future could simply own a life estate in their property, which is considered an exempt interest for the purposes of medicaid.

As with all estate planning techniques, the use of a life estate should occur under the supervision of an attorney. Mistakes can be costly, and while life estates have their benefits, they also have their consequences, such as a loss of control over a property, and potential disputes over the responsibility to repair, maintain, and improve a property.

Like any decent lawyer, I need to add a disclaimer here: unfortunately, it is impossible to offer comprehensive legal advice over the internet, no matter how well researched or written. And remember, reviewing this website and my blogs doesn’t make you a client of my Firm. The rules regarding retirement accounts do change, are highly fact specific, and errors can be extremely costly. Before relying on any information given on this site, please contact a legal professional to discuss your particular situation.

Every now and again I like to post a warning re: scams targeting lawyers and financial managers. This scam was one that I had not heard about before.

I was recently contacted by a financial adviser/trust manager acquaintance of mine located in another state. He relayed to me that he had recently been contacted by a person who stated that he was a resident of South Carolina, but currently had construction work located in another country. The person said that he anticipated that when the work was finished he would be moving to the state where the financial adviser was located. The person wanted to transfer his mutual funds of several million dollars to my acquaintance’s bank for investment management services.

I was contacted for help in possibly drafting a revocable grantor trust-type document to transfer the funds to, with the bank as the investment manager. When I heard the story it just didn’t seem right to me, why would this person be initiating a transfer of assets while he was out of the country? I think whenever I find out that a potential client is located in another country my suspicion increases. Anyway, a few weeks later my acquaintance informed me that the person who had contacted him was not the person he said he was, but was in actuality an imposter/identity thief who was attempting to have the bank transfer the assets out of the control of the real owner, a real person who actually resides in South Carolina. Luckily, the fraud was discovered before any transfers were initiated.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s a jungle out there. From financial fraudsters and schemers, to marketers trying to sell you useless junk or unethical services, you need to be careful in this business. More and more we see fraudsters and identifty thieves targeting those considered to be sophisticated enough to know better. And sometimes it works. Luckily in this instance it did not.