California Wills & Trusts: November 2004 Summary

Updated Product Features

New Special Trusts

You may now add multiple protective trusts or Medicaid trusts to a Revocable Inter Vivos Trust or Stand-alone Will . A protective trust prevents an outright distribution to a beneficiary. Unlike a standby trust, which terminates at a certain age, the beneficiary's distribution is held in trust during his or her lifetime and then passes to remainder beneficiaries. A Medicaid trust is a special needs trust designed to provide care while minimizing the risk of loss under governmental care programs. It authorizes the trustee to make discretionary income and principal payments to or for the benefit of the beneficiary for his or her "special non-support needs." New Questions 561-573.

New Substance Abuse Provision

You may now add an article authorizing the trustee to withhold distributions from a beneficiary engaging in substance abuse or otherwise dependent on drugs. The provision provides for testing and treatment of the beneficiary. The trustee may resume normal distributions to the beneficiary if there has been no drug use by the beneficiary for a period ranging from 12 to 36 months. When the normal distributions are resumed, any suspended amounts also may be paid out to the beneficiary. The article also provides the trustee with certain protections from liability for actions taken (or not taken) pursuant to the article. New Questions 682-685

New AutoSave Function

You should continue to save your answer file as you work, especially before you exit the program. Lawgic continues to prompt you to do so. However sometimes you may forget, or a power outage may shut down your computer when you have not saved for some time. A new AutoSave feature can help you recover more of your work. Lawgic now automatically saves a separate copy of your answer file to LGCTMP00.ANS roughly every fifteen questions. It saves up to ten versions of this file through LGCTMP10.ans. Please select Help (from the Lawgic menu), Help, Advanced Features, Recovering Your Work, for detailed instructions on using this file. If you are using a flag file the AutoSave feature will also save a separate copy of your flag file to LGCTMP00.FLG. The program also saves up to 10 versions of this file through LGCTMP10.flg.

New Warning Message when Lawgic is Already Running

Only one instance of Lawgic may run at a time. Previously, an inadvertent attempt to start a second instance would open a new Lawgic window but the “Select Title/File” box would never appear. Now, an attempt to start a second instance of Lawgic will display a “Lawgic Already Running” warning box.

New Option to Cancel Application Close Button