Choosing a living trust as a component of your estate plan is a wise decision and it is one that can only be made after you have carefully reviewed your current estate planning documents. These include a will and identified that a living trust may be used to complement or replace some of the planning tools you have used in the past.
Some of the most common advantages of a living trust include:
- You ensure that your beneficiaries avoid the probate process for assets placed inside the trust.
- The savings of court proceedings and probate later on in your life can be significant.
- A living trust is flexible and can be cancelled at any time.
- A trust is relatively easy to amend.
- Trusts are often more difficult to contest than a will.
- Your trust is a private document, and rarely enters the public record. A will, on the other hand, is filed in the Probate Court and is available to anyone who wants to to read it.
Putting together a living trust requires thinking about your current documents, the assets you have currently in your estate, and how you would like to pass them on to your beneficiaries. This can be accomplished by setting up a phone call or an in-person consultation with an estate planning attorney in MA who has extensive experience managing living trusts and providing you with necessary guidance about how to protect your interests going forward.