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A Will is an order for your Estate to go through probate court, and a Living Trust distributes your estate without probate. All information contained in a Last Will and Testament becomes part of the public record, accessible by everyone. Another trustee can operate a Living Trust for you during life and care for your property if you become incompetent. In some instances, Estate Taxes can be avoided completely for a married couple and substantially reduced for others.   A Living Trust Avoids Probate A Last Will and Testament is an order for a Court to review the deceased person's estate and make sure that the property goes to the people outlined in the Will. A Revocable Living Trust transfers title of an individual’s or couple’s property into a trust during life and then allows that property to pass to beneficiaries without court involvement. In plain English, it changes the label attached to property so it is owned by the trust and the trust dictates what, when and how property passes to your heirs without probate. If property is not in your individual name, then it does not go through probate.  Probate fees in North Carolina are not extensive, and probate lawyers will be the first to tell you that. However, your family will not usually hear about the extensive attorney fees typically charged for handling probate until after you are gone and it is too late to do something about it. The private distribution process you outline in a Revocable Living Trust dictates how the process will proceed, and the months or years of probate are cast aside in favor of a process that may only take a few weeks. As a practical matter, the court does not generally care about the distribution of your property as long as your debts are handled, taxes are paid, the law is not violated and no one contests the trust.  There are many national statistics about the costs of probate, but many place the costs somewhere between 3% and 8%. For even a $300,000 estate, this would mean costs of somewhere between $9,000 and $24,000. A typical revocable living trust package for a married couple usually costs approximately $1,200 to $2,000, and that includes all healthcare power of attorney documents, durable power of attorney documents, "back-up" wills and living wills.   Living Trusts are Private and Harder to Contest All information contained in a Last Will and Testament is part of the public record, and anyone can access those records. How much property you had, who your heirs are and where they live, and who got what property are all listed in probate documents open to the public. These records provide an easy database for salespeople, con men, and private investigators to see how much money your heirs received and where they live.   A Revocable Living Trust provides substantial privacy since it does not become part of the public record. In addition, Living Trusts are statistically harder to contest than Wills. If an heir contests the validity of a Living Trust or the provisions in a Living Trust, the heirs are not even allowed to review the Living Trust unless the document allows it.* Whenever your Living Trust is contested, the terms of the Living Trust allow a judge to review the document privately and make a ruling without the heirs ever seeing it.  * [A recent North Carolina ruling allows the heirs to see the Living Trust unless the document specifically states that heirs are not allowed to review the document. Our firm either forbids anyone but the Successor Trustee from reviewing the document, or allows the Successor Trustee to decide who may review the Living Trust instrument.] Another Trustee May Manage Your Estate For You During Life A Revocable Living Trust also allows the Grantor  (you or you and your spouse or partner) to relinquish control of the Trust during life to another Trustee. This Successor Trustee may then manage the financial affairs of the Revocable Living Trust in your name even though you are still alive. This relinquishing of control becomes particularly useful if you become incompetent.  In the typical provisions of the Revocable Living Trust, two doctors may determine that the Settlor is incompetent and the Successor Trustee may then step in and manage the financial affairs of the Trust without Court supervision. With a Last Will and Testament, the executor is only allowed to care for the estate upon death, and in the case of incompetence the person must go through an incompetency hearing before a judge and then the conservator must frequently account to the judge for all financial decisions. Your Heirs May Be Left With a Huge Tax Bill Many people also want to utilize a simple credit shelter trust in order to minimize the federal estate tax burden on their children. Each person (using 2011 totals) has $1,000,000 in property that is exempt from federal estate taxes.  So if a husband dies in 2012 with $1,000,000 going to his wife, and the wife dies later in 2014 with $1,000,000 of her own plus the inheritance from her husband, she has an estate of $2,000,000. Her children would receive $2,000,000 from their mother, but only $1,000,000 is exempt property. The federal estate tax would amount to $345,800. With proper estate planning, there would have been no federal estate taxes in this example. There are many reasons to use a Revocable Living Trust, and the few pages of this website are not sufficient to go through all of them. For more information, see Contacting Us. If you wish to submit your information to an attorney for review, then please submit the Questionnaire, and you will be contacted by an attorney to schedule your free initial consultation. Revocable Living Trust       Will       Living Will       Healthcare Power of Attorney Financial Power of Attorney       Special Needs Clients       Downloads