Do you have a trust?

[childay]

How much did it cost to do whatever you have?

[Shant]

I have a will that will create a trust upon death. Some of the beneficiaries are pretty self-destructive on the money front. I piggybacked off another family member, her cost was $5k flat fee.

[Peds]

dont have either.

one should if you buy a house or have children.

good book to start: living trusts for everyone by sharp.

[G]

"living trust" has literally been on my to-do list for almost a decade now....

[AR]

Isn't it state dependent? My understanding is that in some states it does you little to no good.

[Larry Ragman]

My wife and I have wills that are quite old and need to be updated because they create trusts and have guardians for the (now adult) children. The updates should be more straight-forward that the old wills, but we will probably also create a revocable living trust for the rental properties in preparation for owning them out of state since we plan to move when I retire. A trust helps in that scenario to avoid probate in two states.
Quoted price from lawyer for two wills and one trust $1000. I can do it with Nolo software for no additional cost over the software, which I bought for $50. However, my wife won't trust them.

[dennis]

We have both revocable and irrevocable trusts. You didn't allow that option. We've had them long enough I don't remember the cost but I suspect a few $K

[Tim]

We got rid of the revocable trust, life insurance trust and wills. Facts changed.
Replaced with extremely simple wills. Everything to spouse and then split 50/50 to the kids.

[Cubicle]

I need both a will & trust. I'm aware!!! Don't rush me, I'm on the verge of a breakthrough I can feel it.

*sigh* I need to get serious about this.

[White.Beard.Doc]

We have a will that creates trusts upon death. The heirs each get access to 1/3 of their share every 5 years x3, so the money is distributed over 10 years. The trusts protect the funds from divorce or litigation, and the 1/3 x3 hopefully allows some learning to take place if there are financial mistakes made by the heirs.

We spent a flat fee of 3.5k to set up our estate plan. The actual cost would have been more than double that, but the Harvard law trained top estate attorney wanted to get us in the door, so they agreed to a flat fee for initial estate planning with wills and associated documents. They are advising more complex planning to give us a plan that is “better” than our current “good, basic” estate plan. But none of this really matters until both of us die, and the actuarial tables predict that that is very likely some decades off in the future. If we were both to die in a car crash tomorrow, the current plan is good enough. I would imagine that in another decade or so, as we get older, as the assets continue to grow, we will likely pay for a more complex plan to save more estate taxes. But I can also imagine living in a different state 10 or 15 years from now.

For us, the important thing was to start the process, to have a reasonable plan in place. That we have done. This year, I am working on creating an excellent succession plan for the medically related business that I started. The business has grown tremendously in value and makes up roughly half of our net worth.

[VagabondMD]

We have a revocable qualified spousal trust, which was created in 2019, to replaced individual trusts which were never properly funded. We updated our wills and such, I think it cost about $4000, including some help moving our assets into the trust.

[jz-]

Our trusts ($5000) and later amendment ($450) allow the best sleep and satisfaction of any financial task ever.

[DocNextDoor]

Set up our revocable trust and wills years ago, back when the estate tax exemption was 1M. Cost us ~5K.
I highly anticipate a drastic reduction in the exemption back down to 3-5M in the future so it will be of significant beneficial to the kids when we reach our expiration date.

[jfoxcpacfp]

"living trust" has literally been on my to-do list for almost a decade now....

Why?

[dennis]

Set up our revocable trust and wills years ago, back when the estate tax exemption was 1M. Cost us ~5K.
I highly anticipate a drastic reduction in the exemption back down to 3-5M in the future so it will be of significant beneficial to the kids when we reach our expiration date.

I'm not a lawyer but my understanding of a revocable trust is that it has no effect on estate tax on those assets in the trust, it just determines how the assets will be distributed and keeps them out of probate. To keep the assets from being taxed at death they need to be put into another type of trust that keeps them out of the estate (like an irrevocable trust etc...). Correct me if I'm wrong.