HEMS Trust
Creating a trust can alleviate a lot of the stress about providing for your family in the future. HEMS is an acronym that stands for Health, Education, Maintenance, and Support. It’s commonly used in trusts as a guide to control spending your money over a long period of time.
Benefits of the HEMS Trust include:
- Tax benefits
- Lawsuit protection
- Creditor protection
- Assets being excluded in a divorce proceeding
- Clear definition about a Trustee’s discretion (Be as specific or broad as you want)
- Prevent extravagant spending
- Reassurance that young or financially irresponsible people will not mismanage sizeable amount of money (No unlimited access)
Health, Education, Maintenance and Support are rather broad categories, but what do they include, exactly?
Health
- Routine health care
- Hospital care
- Emergency medical treatment
- Psychiatric or psychological care
- Prescription drugs
- Dental
- Vision
- Elective procedures like LASIK or cosmetic surgery
- Alternative medicine treatments
- Gym, sports club, or spa memberships
- Health supplements
Education
- Schooling from grammar to graduate, professional, or technical school or training
- Continuing education expenses
- Expenses for school-related programs, such as Study Abroad in college
- Support during schooling years, even during summers and other breaks, including housing, dining, and books
Maintenance and Support
- Mortgage or rent payments
- Property taxes
- Premiums for health, life, and property insurance
- Charitable giving
- Gifting to family members
- Family vacations
- Uphold the lifestyle which you’ve become accustomed
You can include general language regarding HEMS or you can be more precise about how the trust assets are used. You have a large degree of control.
The HEMS Trust is just one commonly used tool to direct how a trust’s assets are spent. They are powerful documents that can be a cornerstone of any plan.
