I was meeting with a sweet couple from Gibson County recently. Their main concern was avoiding probate costs and delays and they were interested in establishing a revocable living trust to pass their assets to their children in a simple and easy way. Their concern was that they had heard that trusts can cause huge income tax problems. They mentioned a friend who had a trust and every year, they had to pay income tax on the income generated by the trust assets. This is a fairly common concern. A well-prepared trust by an attorney whose practice focuses on estate planning can avoid this problem. Most trusts prepared by estate planning attorneys allow you to simply use your social security number for trust assets like investment accounts and CD’s. Using a EIN (Employer Identification Number) given by the IRS for a non-person entity, like a trust, can cause big headaches when preparing your taxes even where the trust document itself does not require that you obtain an EIN. Do you have a trust and are worried it is a ticking time bomb? Come to one of my upcoming live educational estate planning events and learn about why your existing trust may not be what you thought it was.