A: It's going to depend on what your goal is for the life insurance policy and what sort of access you want to have for that policy. If you want to have access to cash value that’s within the life insurance policy, then you want a revocable trust. A revocable trust allows you the flexibility to add assets to your trust and to have full access to all of the income and assets within your trust. You can decide who you want to leave those assets to, when they'll get access to it, how they'll be able to access it, and how those assets can be managed within the trust. What does funding your trust mean? Funding your trust just means transferring your assets to the trust and either making the trust the owner or making the trust the beneficiary. When we’re talking about funding your trust with life insurance, where you want to have access to the cash value, it's going to need to be a revocable trust. However, if you have tax issues, or have a lot of money and are trying to figure out how to reduce taxes, then you may want to consider an irrevocable trust. You’re most likely going to want to include a term-life policy because you’re not going to have access to cash value if you use a whole-life. For some people this may not be an issue because they have so many assets that they are not necessarily worried about getting access to the cash value of the whole-life policy, it tends to be a longer term, and you don’t have to be concerned about getting a new policy. Your goals will dictate exactly which policy you are going to use and which one will you use to fund your trust. The benefit of having an revocable trust is flexibility. Although it becomes irrevocable when you pass, when you create it you have all of the flexibility during your lifetime to make changes and once you pass away, everything is locked into place. No one, not even your loved ones, will be able to make changes to your trust once it becomes irrevocable. A revocable trust is also created under your identification since it uses your social security number, so essentially you will own the assets in the trust but it provides you with some anonymity because of the way that you can title assets in the trust, which can make it harder for people to find your assets. That being said, a revocable trust is not really an asset protection trust. What it does do, is it helps to put your wishes in place, keep your assets private, and helps avoid probate. Please email legacy@franco-lawfirm.com or use our “Contact Us” form for further information or how you can get started with your legacy planning. Disclaimer: Please note that these answers are for informational purposes only and should NOT be considered legal advice. Neither The Ambitious Legacy Firm, P.C. nor Sabine K. Franco Esq. are your legal counsel unless we formally enter into an attorney/client relationship by signing a formal engagement letter/service agreement. This also means that any and all information shared is NOT covered under attorney-client privilege. However, you should always have your specific situation evaluated by an attorney.