Living Trust Wills
Let's start with the basics. A Trust, to put it in simple words, means an agreement whereby one person holds all sorts of legal titles (the trustee) for another person, or a group of persons (the beneficiary). Accordingly, a 'living trust' is one which you create by yourself while you are alive. 'Living' because it is not a trust that is created after one's death according to the terms or conditions of the deceased person's will.
The greatest benefit of a living trust will is you can avoid probate, enjoy effective tax reductions on your estate and also enjoy benefits in terms of long-term management of properties. Once you are through with the living trust, you have already ensured that the ones whom you want to inherit the property do not have to go through the rigors of the probate court. This means you have saved your beneficiaries' valuable several months' time as well as much of the property itself, which would surely otherwise be eaten up in the legal proceedings by the legal advisors and court fees.
Your transferring the property to a living trust means it will not have to go through the probate. The successor trustee, i.e. the one that you have appointed to manage the trust after you are dead, will directly transfer the ownership to the people you have chosen as your beneficiary(/ies). This means the whole procedure will involve a time period not more than a few weeks, and that too without any court fees or lawyer charges and is one of the greatest benefit of a living trust.
The documents of a living trust will never become public as there is no involvement of probate court procedures. As a result, the inventories indicating your debts or assets, for instance, can remain under the tapes. It however doesn't mean that your trust will be under protection from creditors. Perhaps your house was held under the trust and it passes from you to the ownership of your daughter. You had been under certain debt during your lifetime. The creditor can now demand that your daughter pays off the debt, up to the house's valuation. As a matter of fact, real estate always come under public record. Hence the creditor can always identify who the present owner of the real property is. But the creditors may never find out who the owner of other properties is/are and they will seldom bother tracking it down. It is always advisable to go for a trust will as it provides an essential back-up for such properties which you have not transferred as a trustee to yourself. A very usual instance is that one acquires ownership of some property shortly before one dies. In that case, the person may not have transferred that property to the trust. In case there is no will to back up the trust statements, that piece of property won't transfer to the beneficiary. If you are judicious enough and apply that element of judiciousness in preparing your trust, you can also enjoy great federal tax reductions, even if you own a huge amount of valuable assets. Make sure you use a competent estate planning attorney when deciding upon living wills and trusts.
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