A trust is a legal entity created for the purpose of holding, managing, and distributing property for the benefit of one or more persons. A trust can hold cash, personal property, or real property, or it can be the beneficiary of life insurance proceeds. In the most basic sense, a trust is just another form of a contract. Centuries ago, English landowners, in order to insure the continued wealth of the family, put their estates in trust to be controlled and managed under the terms of the trust agreement for an indefinite period of time. Once the land was placed in trust, the landowners controlled but technically no longer owned the land. As wealth was primarily measured at that time in history by the amount of land owned, the trust arrangement allowed the landowners immunity from creditors and may have absolved them of certain feudal obligations. While feudal concerns no longer exist and wealth is held today in many forms other than land, the concept of placing property in third party hands for the benefit of another while avoiding creditors has survived. A trust remains in many circumstance an effective tool to insure that the trust creator’s wishes regarding the trust assets are complied with for many years, even during periods of the creator’s mental incompetency or after death.
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