Living Trust — Do you need one?
Not everyone needs a living trust. If you are young and don’t own much property and don’t mind making your heirs go through probate, all you need is a simple will. Probate fees on an estate worth $50,000 may be around $1000 —you could leave that in a safety deposit box.
Sometimes a will is just more simple to prepare, and to change. Each state has its own limits on the amount of worth that can be willed without probate. As a rule of thumb, you should examine what your heirs would have to pay in probate costs to quickly decide if a living trust is a better plan for you.
But if you intend to help your heirs avoid the cost and delay of probate, you may want to consider the advantages of a living trust. With a living trust, eveything is spelled out in advance and there are significant tax advantages—although the main advantage of a living trust is to avoid the messy problems of putting your family through probate.
If you have your own business, a living trust can help you appoint someone to keep the bills paid so that your business doesn’t dry up while awaiting probate court. The probate process can turn out to be a kind of legal purgatory. A waiting place where your goods are sorted out after your death. If you have a lot of assets, it may be putting your family thru one more unnecessary trial.
You can get a simple living trust made by a lawyer for $500 or more. If property has to be transfered into the name of the living trust, it may cost you $1000 or more. There are lawyers who specialize in living trusts who put them together for less. Or you can do it yourself with a book called Make Your Own Living Trust. This 300-page book was wriiten by a lawyer and contains all the advice you need to construct your own living trust. It even contains a CD-ROM with the forms you’ll need. You can read more about it at http://www.boomer-books.com
April 13th, 2005 at 4:26 am
Hey, here’s a good sample of a Living Will that anyone can use.
Recent news shows how important it is that each of us has a living will.
The form below will prevent outside interference should you end up in dire
straits in the future.
LIVING WILL
I, _____________________ (fill in the blank), being of sound mind and
body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.
Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of peckerwood
politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on
it.
If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a
cold beer, it should be presumed that I won’t do so ever again. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and
attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.
Under no circumstances shall the members of the Legislature enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren’t in a permanent coma and who nonetheless may be in need of nourishment.
Under no circumstances shall any politicians butt into this case. I don’t
care how many fundamentalist votes they’re trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with
someone else’s life and leave me alone to die in peace and dignity .
I couldn’t care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don’t know these
people, and I certainly haven’t authorized them to preach and/or crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own damn business, too.
If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a
political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.