WillMaker's Revocable Living Trust

With WillMaker, you can make revocable living trusts for your whole family, in addition to WillMaker's other essential estate planning documents, like the will, health care directive, and power of attorney for finances.

What You Can Do With Your WillMaker Living Trust

Here's are some of the things you can do with WillMaker's Living Trust:

• Keep your property out of probate.
• Name a successor trustee who will manage your trust after you die or become incapacitated.
• Name the person who will decide if you have become incapacitated.
• Name who will get your trust property when you die.
• Name alternates for your beneficiaries and successor trustee.
• Name custodians or trustees for the property you leave to minors.
• Make a shared trust with your spouse or partner.
• Make living trusts for other people in your family.
• Create a letter to give to your successor trustee, explaining the job.

Why You Might Want a Living Trust

Most people make a living trust to keep their property out of probate. Probate is process used by courts to wrap up a person's estate after they die. In probate, the court figures out what property the person owned and who should get it. It also figures out what bills the estate needs to pay and in what order. Because probate is usually a bureaucratic, time consuming, and expensive process that yields little benefit to the family, during their lives, many people make efforts keep their property out of probate after they die. There are many ways avoid probate, but living trusts are among the most popular.

Not everyone needs a living trust. Those with simple or small estates may find that the benefits of keeping property out of probate does not justify the hassle of creating a living trust, transferring property, and maintaining the trust. Whether you should make a living trust or not will depend on your personal circumstances and preferences. To help you decide whether a living trust is right for you and your family, read more about living trusts and compare using a living trust with using a will.

Making WillMaker's Living Trust

Making a living trust with WillMaker is very much like making WillMaker 's other documents: You complete an interview deciding what property to include and who should get it, you preview your document, and then print, sign, and notarize it. Along the way, you'll get lots of legal and practical information to help you decide how to proceed.

There is one big difference with the trust, however, after you sign it, you're still not done – you must transfer your property into the trust. You'll get lots of detailed information about how to do this.