Doing a Living Trust takes some careful consideration and forethought. You must decide who you want to take care of your minor children when you can't, who will be the Trustee and manage the Trust when you die, and how you want your assets divided at your death.
Warning!
Reading to educate yourself about Trusts is a good thing. Using books or kits to do your own Living Trust is a very bad idea. We cannot state this more emphatically: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO YOUR OWN TRUST FROM A BOOK OR A KIT! The adage which says, "An attorney who defends himself has a fool for a client", was never more true. A Living Trust is not always called for in every situation and you should talk to a qualified advisor regarding your circumstances to determine whether a Living Trust is the answer for you.
A Living Trust is a serious document that affects the rest of your financial life, and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are at risk when you consider Probate fees, Estate Taxes, Capital Gains Taxes, and Gift Taxes, not to mention Medicaid and all of its poverty-producing regulations. Make no mistake, this important task takes expert assistance, and expert follow-up help is important. The most important part of what you pay for is the ongoing help and assistance you receive for months and years after your trust is done. You can't get that from a kit or a book. You may leave your assets to anyone you want in any configuration you choose. You can leave uneven amounts to your children or others, disinherit, or provide for disabled children. Just about anything you can imagine, you can do. You can have your children take over when you die and work together in settling the trust, or assign the job to them individually in any order or scenario you desire. You may also amend your Trust at any time without seeking the help of an attorney.
The best advice we can give is to carefully seek out a professional who believes strongly in the advantages of a Living Trust over a Will. The Yellow Pages is not the way to select a professional for this task. Finally, be sure you are being quoted a package price for the entire Trust project and not being charged by the hour or document or for follow-up assistance.
Attorneys can be a risk unless they specialize in Estate Planning. Like doctors, unless they specialize, they simply do not receive enough formal education on the subject to be experts. They have been taught and indoctrinated by their profession to write Wills and do the lucrative Probates later. Fortunately not all attorneys are dishonest but we have seen cases where attorneys have written a Testamentary Trust for a client knowing that it will not keep the client's assets out of Probate. This is clearly malpractice on the attorney's part. In that case, the attorney gets his cake and eats it, too. The client gets a Trust, and the attorney still gets to do the Probate when the client dies.
If an attorney even suggests that you do a Will. . . RUN, DO NOT WALK, as fast as you can away from that attorney and find someone who will discourage a Will and recommend a Living Trust. Even then you cannot be sure the "good" attorney is expert enough to do a truly "excellent" Trust. An "excellent" Trust is one that is not only properly drafted, but is accurately and properly executed (signed) and expertly funded (your assets transferred into it). The attorney should include that entire process in his base fee. Get the deal in writing. Buyer beware!...$300 an hour gets expensive and nobody likes surprises!
Although many attorneys advertise a low price for drafting the Trust documents, they typically do not include the process of funding the Trust into their price. Instead, they charge you their going rate of $250 to $300 per hour to help you fund your assets into it (transfer deeds, savings accounts, investments, and the like). It isn't unusual for the total cost with an attorney to add up to $2,500 to $4,000 by the time your Living Trust project is completed and funded even though the attorney may have advertised a low and reasonable initial price. Even then, future help and assistance will most surely be charged to you at the attorney's hourly rate of $250 to $300 an hour. Heritage Trust was formed to offer an alternative to this costly and difficult situation and we never charge for follow up, changes, or help and assistance. As we said, if you work with an attorney make sure he is uniquely qualified and get his services and costs detailed in writing on his letterhead.