Can the Irrevocable Living Trust Trustee be the same person as the Trustor?

Yes, but the trust has to have a means to have there be a successor trustee when the trustor is not longer able to function or is dead.

Please, get help from a good estate planning lawyer. There is almost no case where an irrevocable trust is really a good idea. In almost all cases, only the very rich use irrevocable trusts, and they have lots of lawyers work on them. Whether you do it at all, and who should be trustee, and who are permissible as beneficiaries, are all questions with crucial legal and tax ramifications that can't be answered on a website, but are part of a carefully considered plan with specific goals. It will cost you and your beneficiaries a LOT more in legal fees and taxes to sort out the mess you're on the road to making than it will cost to have good estate planning done in the first place.

You are strongly advised to obtain the services of a probate/estate planning attorney, to answer your many questions; be careful about doing an irrevocable living trust, because once established, then it takes a court order to revoke or amend should you change your mind about some provision. A revocable trust is the better way to go.

Have you thought about do-it-yourself brain surgery? A simple 'statutory' will, perhaps. A trust, no. Especially an irrevocable trust!

It sounds like you are mixing things up. If you are talking about an irrevocable trust, then no, the grantor should not be the trustee. One of the purposes behind an irrevocable trust is to typical get assets OUT of the grantor's estate, for various reasons. Having the grantor as a trustee (or beneficiary) would defeat that purpose. A trust is a relatively complex estate planning tool. If not done properly, it will not achieve your objectives. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing right, which means using an attorney. When you skimp on estate planning, it is likely to cost both you AND your beneficiaries.

The Trustor can be the Trustee of an Irrevocable Trust as well as a beneficiary. Usually, a living trust is a revocable trust, not an irrevocable trust. There are many traps in this area, both accounting, tax, and legal. I sure would not suggest you attempt to do this yourself. With that in mind, if you are intending to create an irrevocable trust, usually that means that you are making a gift to the trustee of the trust for the benefit of 3rd parties, not yourself. In making that gift, you need to know the values of the assets being gifted, and a gift tax return is usually required. One of the goals of an irrevocable trust is to remove the assets from your estate and not have them a part of your gross estate for estate tax purposes. Another goal may be to avoid creditors getting to those assets in the irrevocable trust. Sometimes, an irrevocable trust is intended to be defective for income tax purposes and sometimes for estate tax purposes. It depends on the goals set up from an overall estate planning perspective. You have not said much in your question as to what your goals are. As a result, my best advice to you is to use a professional who knows what they are doing to consult with you about your goals and what choices there are to achieve those goals. You will find that hiring the right person will be inexpensive as compared to making mistakes in this arena. Should you have any questions or wish to discuss this matter further, please feel free to contact me.

Yes, to both questions.

The real question is what you hope to achieve with the irrevocable trust. A trustor can be a beneficiary and a trustee, but doing this has huge consequences on the tax effect and creditor protection of the trust. If you are hoping to protect assets from creditors or trying to do estate tax planning, you'll need to work with an experienced and knowledgeable asset protection attorney. Such an attorney can also help you build enough flexibility into the irrevocable trust to be able to change it without going to court or getting the consent of all beneficiaries later. This is a dangerous area for self-help.

They can be, but I strongly recommend that you get an attorney to draft the trust for you and you discuss any tax issues with your accountant. In Idaho, a trust is usually not worth using if all you want to do is avoid probate. Unlike other states, e.g. California, the attorneys are paid an hourly rate, not a percentage of the estate, so you are not really avoiding anything by creating the trust. Also, you have to be careful to make sure the trust owns everything. If you do not do that right, your estate may end up in probate anyway. Finally, there is no estate tax in Idaho and the Federal estate tax only goes into effect if the estate is worth more that $5.25 million ($10.5 million for a married couple). If you have that much money, you can afford to have it done right.

You are begging for trouble doing this yourself. If you are confused with this you are certainly not able to do the rest. Go to an attorney and explain what your want to accomplish.