When you first get serious about planning your estate you probably have objectives in mind without being certain about how to bring these goals to fruition. By discussing these objectives with an estate planning attorney you can get an idea of the various options what are available to you beyond the simple will, and one of these alternatives is the revocable living trust.
A good estate plan is going to facilitate the smooth transference of your assets to your heirs when you pass on, and depending on your estate, avoiding probate is a good way to do that. Probate is the legal process of administering an estate, and it is time consuming and expensive in many cases. When you create a revocable living trust, your assets are distributed to your heirs in the manner you set forth without being subject to the probate process.
The starting point is to fund the trust and then appoint a trustee to manage it. When you are using a revocable living trust for estate planning purposes you name yourself as the trustee so that you retain control of the trust while you are living. You then name your beneficiaries and a successor trustee. Upon your death, the successor trustee makes sure that your beneficiaries receive their inheritances according to the terms of the trust. In this manner the estate can completely bypass probate. And since the trust is revocable, you have the power to alter it as you see fit over the years, and you can dissolve it entirely should you choose to do so.
Revocable living trusts enable fast and efficient estate resolution, and they are a very effective solution for many people. If you are interested in the possibility of creating a revocable living trust, please feel free to contact us at (904) 672-7600 to arrange for a free consultation.
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