Last will / testament and revoke-able trust; how to keep things simple and cost effective?

[z0rk]

Last will / testament and revoke-able trust; how to keep things simple and cost effective?

We have a will in place. We would like to change the beneficiary. We have hard copies of our will, but no digital copies. The lawyer who draw up the will retired and we’re unable to source the original digital copy to take to a new lawyer.

Our short term objective is to change the beneficiary from our daughter to our grand child. We want to ensure that all of our assets go to our grand child.

We want to ensure that our daughter cannot contest the will. Our assets are in property (all in WA State), savings and stocks.

Our long term objective is to draw up a revoke-able trust that could be fine tuned to include nieces and nephews. It could be more granular and include particular conditions and restrictions.

We are wondering, if this would be the best approach re: cost or if it would be better to just get the trust done. Our concern as stated above is that something could happen to us before we have the time to educate ourselves more about the general subject matter of trusts and to get it in place.

We are wondering what would be the best approach to accomplish or short and long term goal. Given that we don’t have a digital copy of our current will would it make sense to start from scratch and to keep cost low maybe use a do-it-yourself will? Should we forgo our short term objective and just focus on getting a revoke-able trust drawn up?

Our concern is to get something new in place quickly in case something happens to the two of us and then later after we’ve educated ourselves tackle the trust.

We would appreciate any feedback to help us think through this.

Thanks

 

[FlyingRon]

First, you tell us what state you are in.

I'm presuming your daughter is an adult. Actually, it's very hard to make it so someone can't contest a will, especially someone who is disowned by it. A well-crafted will, however, will keep such protests from being successful.

Absent seeing the CURRENT will, we can't tell you if just preparing a new word-for-word copy with the names changed would be sufficient.

Frankly, what I'd do is consult an attorney and tell him what you intend to do and ask his suggestion as to an inexpensive short-term solution.
My entire estate package (wills for me and my wife, revocable trusts, retitling the real estate and other assets, advanced medical directives and powers of attorney took two sessions with the attorney and a couple of days of the attorney's prep time. Unless you're really concerned you may kick off in the next couple of weeks, you may want to forgo the kludged-up stop gap.

 

[z0rk]

Sorry, we all live in WA State. Our daughter is an adult. Thanks for your direct and frank advice. I appreciate it.

 

[TrustUser]

first question i have for you - are you wanting your trust to manage your assets after both of you pass ?

or are you just looking for the trust to pass to your beneficiaries directly, without probate ?

 

[z0rk]

We would want our trust to pass directly to our beneficiaries.

 

[TrustUser]

then i would NOT waste time on a short-term solution

there is not a lot to learn about trusts, and most trust packages that you come across will be able to do that job

the real advantage and sophistication of trusts comes when the trust manages assets for the beneficiaries, instead of distributing assets to them

 

[FlyingRon]

Of course, a trust isn't an end-all to estate planning. Even if you place all your major assets in the trust, you'll still want a will and the other documents I mentioned.

 

[Gail in Georgia]

Typically an attorney that will develop a revocable-trust for you will also include a will, advanced medical directives and other documents as Flying Ron has pointed out.

I went this route over just a typical will to avoid probate after seeing what my partner Bill went through with his mothers estate (four years going through the process; Bill himself passed away before completing it and it's now dumped on his daughter to deal with it).

For me, the trick was finding an attorney who would actually do a trust. It's not a particularly complicated process even with my rental properties. I found many attorneys are MORE than happy to draw up a will fairly inexpensively. Their money comes afterwards during the often long, drawn out probate process. The initial cost of the trust is more but the process to complete after you pass away is easier without the requirement for the probate court to approve everything.

Gail

 

[TrustUser]

gosh, there are all sorts of attorneys who specialize in the mom and pop trusts

they all hold seminars, explaining the trusts, with the hopes of getting people signed up

personally, i dont even have a will

both my parents died with just their trust, no will

i handled all the finances, and never needed a will to do anything

a pour-over will doesnt hurt - but if one's trust is done completely, it is somewhat unneeded

wills also generally require 2 or 3 witnesses, whereas a trust only requires a notarized signature

and just in case you are not aware - wills are subject to probate

trusts are private documents

 

[paprclip]

gosh, there are all sorts of attorneys who specialize in the mom and pop trusts

they all hold seminars, explaining the trusts, with the hopes of getting people signed up

personally, i dont even have a will

both my parents died with just their trust, no will

i handled all the finances, and never needed a will to do anything

a pour-over will doesnt hurt - but if one's trust is done completely, it is somewhat unneeded

wills also generally require 2 or 3 witnesses, whereas a trust only requires a notarized signature

and just in case you are not aware - wills are subject to probate

trusts are private documents

I absolutely HATE when "trust advisors" come into my state and convince people to spend a couple thousand dollars on their trusts. Since Louisiana's law isn't based on American "black-letter" (common) law it doesn't recognize the "American-style" trusts. Some of the differences are: the trustee and beneficiaries have to be different [the trustee holds the principal for the benefit of the beneficiary], there is a difference between the principal (corpus) beneficiary(s) and the income beneficiary(s), and there cannot be successor principal beneficiaries.

I, personally, rarely draft trusts since it's a rather complicated area, but if someone were to come to my office wanted me to notarize a pre-written one I absolutely will NOT! (The same with wills; if I didn't draft it, I won't notarize it.)

 

[FlyingRon]

Louisiana's legal system is rather irrelevant to the topic at hand which is WASHINGTON STATE.

 

[TrustUser]

i know louisiana is very different, but like ron said

the lawyers who advertise here in california are typically charging $400 - $700. and california tends to be more expensive in most things. so i suspect that these sorts of situations occur over most states ?

they all have their own trusts. and all they generally have to do is fill in a few fields for each new client.

with the tremendous amount of people who dont yet have trusts, it is a good and somewhat inexpensive way to inform the public.

as far as notarizing - from what i have seen the notary is not responsible for what is said in the document. only that the person signing is verified, and seems of reasonable good senses, and not being forced. of course, i only have experienced california. but i have never heard of a notary being responsible for what is in the document. and i suspect that if they really were responsible for anything in a document, there would be no notaries in that area !!

 

[quincy]

i know louisiana is very different, but like ron said

the lawyers who advertise here in california are typically charging $400 - $700. and california tends to be more expensive in most things. so i suspect that these sorts of situations occur over most states ?

they all have their own trusts. and all they generally have to do is fill in a few fields for each new client.

with the tremendous amount of people who dont yet have trusts, it is a good and somewhat inexpensive way to inform the public.

as far as notarizing - from what i have seen the notary is not responsible for what is said in the document. only that the person signing is verified, and seems of reasonable good senses, and not being forced. of course, i only have experienced california. but i have never heard of a notary being responsible for what is in the document. and i suspect that if they really were responsible for anything in a document, there would be no notaries in that area !!

Louisiana notaries are different, hence FlyingRon's response to Paprclip.

 

[ALawyer]

As the assets you would want to leave to your granddaughter include "property" -- by which I assume you mean real estate -- you likely would want to go the living trust route as it's often the best approach.

With the "living trust" you'd each also want to create the living trust, contribute your assets to the living trust (including re-titling assets such as bank and brokerage accounts and real estate so they are held in the name of the living trust) and also execute new pour-over wills that would leave any assets you'd not placed in your living trust (such as your automobiles) to the living trust. You and your spouse would serve as trustees of the living trust during your lifetimes, or until you became disabled and unable to handle matters, and then the living trust would name a successor trustee.

You'd want to retitle real estate into the name of the living trust and thus you'd have to file a new deed for each piece of real property with the county registrar (or whatever the official is called in Washington State) in the county where each item of real estate is located. (While another possibility might be to retitle the real estate using new deeds naming you and your wife and your granddaughter as joint tenants with right of survivorship, that approach could involve some unintended consequences, and you'd still need to cover any non-real estate assets.)

If your daughter is under the age of 18 (and thus a minor who could not legally take title to the property), and even if she's a young adult who is not sufficiently prudent to be able to manage and preserve the property she'd inherit, you might want to provide that successor trustee would continue to manage the trust until she reached a milestone (such as completed her college graduation or attained age 25).

If are concerned that your daughter might contest a will or trust don't handle this as a do it yourself project but get a lawyer to craft the documents, as you'd really need professional advice and when you have a lawyer who knows what he or she is doing, that's what you really are paying for and the comfort that things will be done right -- including the "details" such as making sure the documents are properly executed as thus are binding and not susceptible to legal challenge..

 

[z0rk]

retitling the real estate and other assets

FlyingRon, what does "re-titling" refer to?