On July 7, 2014 a Los Angeles judge will have a hearing to determine whether or not Donald Sterling is capable of serving as Trustee of his and his wife’s Trust. The Trust controls the entity which holds the Los Angeles Clippers, a NBA professional basketball team.
Under the Sterling’s Estate Planning their Trust contains Mental Disability Planning which allows for one Trustee (or Spouse) to take over management of that Trust if the other Spouse is unable to serve as Trustee due to Mental Disability. In the Sterling’s case it appears that it is based upon the opinion of several medical physicians.
The goal of having Mental Disability Planning inside of your Trust, aka Living Trust, aka Revocable Living Trust, is to avoid the time, expense and delay of lengthy Court proceedings on Mental Disability. Here the issue has been narrowed down to whether or not Donald Sterling has capacity to act as a Trustee. It is not a full flat-out jury trial that would be public, lengthy and very expensive.
Compare this Estate Planning with Mental Disability Planning contained inside of their Living Trust versus the Estate Planning for radio icon Casey Kasem, who had no such planning in place which lead to repeated court proceedings in both California and the State of Washington with feuding family members.
When we do Trust based Estate Planning for our clients, we include Mental Disability Planning to avoid lengthy, difficult and expensive Court litigation as we saw in the Casey Kasem situation.
At the Law Firm of Steven Andrew Jackson, Attorney and Counsellor at Law, we have helped hundreds of families protect themselves and their loved ones, avoid Estate Taxes and Probate Costs, and keep their Estate Plans current with the law through The Customized Protective Estate Planning Solution™.