SHOULD I PUT MY TIMESHARE IN MY TRUST?

For some people timeshares are the perfect vacation solution.  For others, they are a nightmare of fees and wasted time on paperwork.
The trick for estate planning is to figure out which category your children are in.

Most, but not all, timeshares are an interest in real property.  That means that you do actually own something (other than all of the fees).

Different timeshares are set up differently, but often they are what lawyers refer to as a “tenancy in common” where distinct people or entities have a percentage ownership in a piece of real estate.  The co-owners also have a timeshare agreement that designates the manner in which they share the property.

WHY YOU MAY WANT TO PUT YOUR TIMESHARE IN YOUR TRUST

YEA! I FINALLY HAVE A TRUST! AM I DONE?

According to several polls less than half of Americans have an estate plan so congratulations on getting the first step done.  Putting your affairs in order is a very loving thing for you to do for your heirs and yourself (in the case of your incapacity) and I want to encourage you to finish the job.  Hopefully you went to a qualified attorney instead of some trust mill, but either way the chances that you are done are, unfortunately, slim.  If you have a revocable living trust-based estate plan (as opposed to a will-based estate plan) then what you have paid for is a (hopefully) beautiful (hopefully) complete intention.  Acting on that intention is the next step.

HOW CAN I STEAL A CHUNK OF MY NEIGHBOR’S LAND?

You may be surprised at how often I get this question.  Usually there is a story: years ago someone put up a fence to keep the cows out of the orchard or the foxes away from the chickens or the kids in the yard.  Maybe no one knew where the property line was back then or maybe they did, the “who knew what who said what who agreed to what” is usually in dispute, but what is clear is that one party is using property on the wrong side of the surveyed official property line, and Mr. Robinson is suing his neighbor.