 Here's the deal. You work hard for your money, and when you pass away, you want what you've worked hard for to go to your loved ones. That sounds easy enough, but often it doesn't end up happening that way. Let me give you an example. Unfortunately, you pass away, or if you're married, you and your spouse pass away. A few years back, you did a living trust. Your trust says that when you pass away, everything you have goes to your wonderful daughter. She's smart and clever. She eventually gets married. She then uses some of her inheritance from you to pay for a house she bought with her husband. She also put a chunk away in an investment account and a bank account she had with her husband. In other words, she ends up mixing some of the money she inherited from you with that of her own marriage assets. Basically, your daughter spends part of what you work so hard for, that inheritance you gave her, on things that are co-owned or mixed in with her husband. Time goes by, and eventually your daughter and her husband split up. Guess what? Part of what you gave her will likely end up going to him in a divorce proceeding. How can something like this happen? Because California and many other states have laws that say something like, if your kids mix up what they've inherited from you with other assets they have with their spouse, the courts presume that everything that's mixed together is community property. That is, unless your child can prove otherwise, but the burden is on your child to prove what was what. Our office can help you as parents prevent something like the situation from happening by working with you to add a divorce protection trust to the provisions of your family trust. The divorce protection trust holds whatever money or other assets you're passing on to your loved ones. Now, after you've passed away, your beneficiaries can get their inheritance with proper precautions in a way that can keep that inheritance from you pretty much divorce proof. I use children in my example, but you can set up a divorce protection trust within the terms of your family trust for any beneficiary you'd like to protect. It can be sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, any loved one you think would benefit from a divorce protection trust. This is a serious subject and I know there's a lot to take in, but I hope you've learned something from my little video. Please feel free to share it with friends and family. I'm a state planning attorney, Hollis Low.