Owning a Boat Through a Trust

[gustavolm]

My question involves estate planning in the state of: FLORIDA

Hi, my name is Gustavo and I'm not american. My wife, Roberta, has double nationality, brazilian and american, and we both live in Brazil. However, she has family members living in USA.
Said that, we would like to buy a sailboat in US and bring it to Brazil (better and cheaper boats). However, we need that the boat be registered in the name of a US resident person. So, we talked with my wife's aunt that lives in US and she agreed to have the boat in her name. However, I want to assure that my wife's aunt has no right on the boat (selling later, using the boat, etc), to protect our saved investment. My wife would have all the rights regarding anything about the boat.
Well, we read some articles about Irrevocable Living Trust and we would like to know if it would be the right legal instrument for that. We are thinking something like: the aunt would be the grantor and trustee, my wife would be the beneficiary, where the grantor and the trustee shall haven't any rights.

Well, having said that, I have the following questions:
1) Is this idea plausible?
2) What name would be used on the sailboat registration with USCG? What will appear in documentation as the owner of the boat?
3) Is it possible to protect the asset in a irrevocable trust against Medicaid?

Thank you very much for your kindly help!

Best regards,
Gustavo

[Mr. Knowitall]

A boat that has been transferred into a trust is owned by the trust, not by an individual.

There are many forms of irrevocable trust, but the "living trust" is a type of trust that is revocable during the trustor's lifetime and becomes irrevocable on death or possibly upon permanent disability.

Whose Medicaid benefit are we talking about, and how does it come into the picture?

[gustavolm]

A boat that has been transferred into a trust is owned by the trust, not by an individual.

There are many forms of irrevocable trust, but the "living trust" is a type of trust that is revocable during the trustor's lifetime and becomes irrevocable on death or possibly upon permanent disability.

Whose Medicaid benefit are we talking about, and how does it come into the picture?

Thank you for your help Mr. Knowitall.

Imagining the boat as part of an Irrevocable Trust and just trying to visualize how the document would be, could you give me an example what will be written in the owner line?

Regarding the many types of Irrevocable Trust, I would like one that is Irrevocable since it´s creation not only after death. I´m really clueless what type of irrevocable trust to use but that´s why I´m here looking for advice if this type of legal instrument will fit my necessity. The next step would be getting a lawyer to compose the trust.

Regarding Medicaid, I read in some websites that you have to protect the assets in a irrevocable trust if the grantor gets really sick and use this argument on court to sell the assets. Did I misunderstand something?

Sorry in advance for either any misspelling or lack of vocabulary, english is not my main language.

Thank you one more time.

[aaron]

If a boat is owned by a trust, then the owner is the trust. So if the trust were called "The Joe Smith Irrevocable Trust", once the boat was transferred over to the trust the owner would be "The Joe Smith Irrevocable Trust".

You can find a lot of general information on Medicaid liens in various threads in this Forum, or through a broader web search. It's not clear from what you've shared so far how Medicaid is relevant, or whose use of Medicaid you believe might trigger a lien.