A
living trust is an important part of your estate plan. Making a living trust
takes a more work than writing a will because a living trust requires that you
take the additional step of transferring property into the trust. But like
wills, living trusts are simple documents that do not require a lawyer’s
blessing. Most people can create a living trust without an attorney using
software or an online service.
The
main reason to set up a living trust is to avoid probate. Probate is the
process that courts use to distribute a deceased person’s property. Most people
don’t need or want their estate to go through probate because it’s expensive
and time consuming. Property that passes through a living trust does not have
to go through probate. Instead, the person named in the trust to be the trustee
distributes the deceased person’s property without court oversight. For many
people with simple estates, this is far better than paying the court thousands
of dollars and waiting months or years for the court to make the same
distributions.
