A trust offers a lot of benefits and I’ll compare it to a will in terms of. A will only says where your property goes when you pass away, whereas a trust says where your property goes if you were to become incapacitated and when you pass away. What a trust also allows you to do is have more control over your property.
For example, most people have minors who are beneficiaries or perhaps a beneficiary in mind that you have concerns about their responsibility with managing money, trusts are much easier to control how your assets are being distributed to given individuals.
Another benefit of trusts are that they are administered outside of court, therefore, the administration is private. When you do a probate it’s in a public court and anyone can see anything about your estate.
Another thing is that trusts are much cheaper to administer. When you have a probate estate an attorney is required to make court filings and wait for the court’s authorization for certain actions that may need to be taken in the estate, whereas the trust administration happens outside of court, privately, with the trustee and the attorney. So, it’s much more timely and efficient and timely to get the assets administered.
Another benefit of a trust is it’s easy to hold out of state property. If you had a probate, you could potentially be required to run a probate in multiple states, whereas the trust, you don’t have to do any of that and hold property in Ohio and not have to worry about finding an Ohio attorney.
And that’s why a trust is generally better than a will.
Biddle Law proudly serves the areas of San Mateo County, Burlingame, Foster City, San Carlos County, Redwood City and Belmont, California. Contact us to speak with our experienced trust administration attorney.