How Do Living Trusts Work?
This is a transcript of a podcast posted February 16, 2006.
 We’re speaking with Attorney Denis Clifford, an expert on estate planning and the author of several books on wills, estates, and trusts, including the best-selling Make Your Own Living Trust, from Nolo.
QUESTION: Denis, I wanted to talk about one of the main reasons which a lot of people want to create a living trust: to avoid probate. So maybe you can start by explaining for people what probate is, and why people want to avoid it so much.
DENIS CLIFFORD: Well, I’d say yes, it’s definitely the major reason people want to create and do create living trusts -- to avoid probate. Probate is a court process required of almost all wills. Someone dies, and you get the will, and then you have to hire a lawyer and the lawyer files the will with the court, and there’s a bunch of legal falderal that goes on, and forms are filed, and fees are generated, and finally a judge says, “Okay, the will’s valid, and okay, I order the property transferred to who the beneficiaries are in the will.”
This process takes a minimum of several months, and often longer. It’s really an absurd process and in almost all cases has no benefit for anyone except the lawyers involved, and the court system, for making money. One of the things I’ve pointed out for years is that unlike almost all other court proceedings, in a probate proceeding, it’s almost never contested. It’s basically a clerical proceeding in which the rubber stamps are applied, and the actual proceeding isn’t too different than something at the DMV office, and it’s really no reason at all except historical accident that this goes through a court system. But it’s so lucrative, and generates billions of dollars a year for lawyers, that the system continues and goes on.
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