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LayRoots, Seattle, WA (2026)

The Lawyer-Humans over at LayRoots help families and small business owners make sure that everything and everybody they love is taken care of if anything happens to them. In our experience, for many small business owners, family and business are more interconnected than we often realize. We ask our families to help paint walls, or work the cash register, or just support the business owner when they need it while also being supported by the business. If you want to make sure that things are as easy as possible for your family, the people you love, your clients, your team members and employees, then you'll want to talk to us.

09/30/2026

A client asked us last week if her single-member LLC could become a multi-member LLC without triggering a partnership return.

She wanted the stronger asset protection that comes with multi-member status, but she didn't want the extra tax filing. Short answer: yes, in the right setup.

A single-member LLC is easier at tax time (just add it to your 1040), but in most states it offers weaker charging order protection. A multi-member LLC is stronger from an asset protection standpoint, but it triggers a partnership return every year. New form, new deadline (March instead of April), extra K-1s, bigger CPA bill.

There's a way to get both.

If you and your spouse own the LLC together and you're in a community property state like Washington, your LLC is considered single member despite the multiple members. If you want the stronger protection of a multi-member LLC, but the tax simplicity of a disregarded entity, gifting a piece of the LLC to a grantor trust (an IDGT/SLAT/SPAT, usually for kids or a parent) keeps everything disregarded because the trust's income flows back to you anyway. Multi-member protection, single 1040.

In a non-community property state like Oregon, spouses owning an LLC directly get treated as a partnership by default. Same fix works though. Hold the membership interests through disregarded grantor trusts and the whole structure collapses back to one tax filing.

The end result: multi-member charging order protection, no partnership return, lower CPA bill.

For our client, this meant she could get the protection upgrade she wanted without adding a March deadline to her calendar.

09/11/2026

An advisor we work with asked me about placing life insurance plans in a SLAT (irrevocable trust). It's an easy way to reduce estate taxes, but what if you borrow from the insurance policy to make other investments? Can you still borrow if the policy is in a SLAT?

The point of moving a life insurance policy into a trust is to get it out of your estate, so the death benefit isn't hit with estate tax. Borrowing *directly from that policy after the transfer and the IRS could call it an "incident of ownership." The policy could get pulled right back into your estate. You lose the tax benefit the trust was built for in the first place.

There is a way to get cash out of the arrangement. The trust can loan money to you. It just has to be designed like a loan between strangers.

I had the robots whip up an infographic to highlight how to keep things on the up and up.

03/27/2026

With a self‑settled trust, if things go bad and creditors push you into bankruptcy, the bankruptcy trustee can look back 10 years at transfers you’ve made. Even if you set the trust up 20 years ago, something you moved 5 years ago is still inside that 10‑year window and can be pulled back into the pot for creditors.

With a Special Power of Appointment Trust (SPAT), that “uh‑oh window” on certain transfers before bankruptcy can be as short as 2 years (depending on the facts and the law in play).

That difference between 10 years and 2 years can decide who ends up owning a big chunk of your life’s work.

If you want the plain‑English version of how we use SPATs to build flexibility and shorten that risk window, comment “SPAT” or DM me “SPAT” and I’ll send you my SPAT Playbook.

03/25/2026

Most people hear “special power of appointment” and immediately think: “Legal Latin, not for me.”

In this clip, we translate it into plain English:
A special power of appointment is basically a special ability to give.

When we create a special power of appointment trust (SPAT), we name a trusted person (often a friend or family member) who holds that special ability. If the plan needs to change later, that person can give trust assets back to the person who set up the trust, instead of everything being locked in a concrete box forever.

In other words: it’s how you build flexibility into something that’s supposed to be “irrevocable,” so your future self isn’t handcuffed by today’s decisions.

If you want the plain‑English version of how we use this in real plans, comment “SPAT” below or DM me “SPAT” and I’ll send you my SPAT Playbook

Address

Seattle, WA

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 8pm
Tuesday	9am - 8pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+12062199559

Website

https://www.layroots.com/about/

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