Living Trusts

Living TrustsYou can avoid probate, and pass your property to your children within only a couple of months by creating a Living Trust. A Living Trust is a legal entity that is separate from you as an individual. You transfer title to your major assets to this trust—like your house and your brokerage accounts. During your lives, you and your spouse serve as the trustees of the trust, which gives you the power to buy, sell, and otherwise transfer any of the assets in it. When both of you die, the assets in the trust are transferred to the beneficiaries of the trust, usually your children, without going through probate at all.

Though it costs some money now to set up a Living Trust, and takes some time to manage it, it costs about 1/10th of what the probate process will cost your estate and allows you to craft an estate plan that maximizes what you've got for the people who need it most, your kids.