How a Revocable Living Trust Avoids Probate

Living Trust and Estate Planning Document
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One of the primary purposes of forming a revocable living trust is to avoid probate. Making a trust isn't all that complicated to accomplish. You can rest assured knowing that your estate and your beneficiaries won't get bogged down in a court-supervised probate process after your death.

You'll also know that your personal affairs will remain just that—private. Your last will becomes a matter of public record when it's submitted for probate. 

Set-Up

A revocable trust is created by writing a trust agreement. The agreement involves three primary parties who are the trust-maker—also called the grantor or settlor—the trustee, and the beneficiary. As the names imply, the trust maker is the individual who makes and funds the trust. The beneficiary is the person who benefits from the trust. The trustee manages the trust and its property. 

With a typical revocable trust, the trust maker, trustee, and beneficiary are all typically the same person.

Funding

After the trust agreement has been completed and signed, the trust maker will fund the trust, which involves transferring their assets into its ownership. They would normally designate the trust as the beneficiary of their retirement accounts, life insurance, and annuities. Real estate is also commonly held in trust.

As a trustee, the trust maker will then manage, invest and spend the trust's property for their benefit as beneficiary, and for the benefit of others if they have also named them as beneficiaries of the trust to inherit after their death. 

Avoiding Probate

The trust maker will not own property in their name after the assets have been funded into the name of the trust. Technically, they will be owned by the trustee for the beneficiary's benefit—the trust-maker themselves or later beneficiaries. Because the trust creator doesn't personally own this property, probate is not required to transfer ownership to other individuals when they die. The trust vehicle does not die with the trust-maker but lives on as a separate legal entity. 

The administrative or successor trustee named in the trust agreement will have the legal authority to step into the trust maker's shoes after the death of the trust-maker. They can take control of bank accounts, investment accounts, and business interests. Also, they can collect life insurance proceeds, retirement accounts, and annuities, pay the trust maker's final bills, debts and taxes, and distribute the balance of the trust funds to the other beneficiaries named in the trust agreement—all without probate and court involvement. 

When Probate May Be Required 

Of course, if you form a revocable living trust but neglect to transfer certain property into it—maybe something you purchased long after the trust was created and that you never got around to moving into the trust—this particular asset would require probate. If you don't also have a will, the property will pass to your heirs-at-law—your closest kin who can inherit from you in the absence of a will under state law. 

One way to avoid such oversight is to create a "pour-over" will at the same time you create and fund your trust. A pour-over can direct any assets you own outside the trust move into the trust at the time of your death to be administered to your trust's beneficiaries under the terms of your trust agreement.

But any property left outside your trust will still require probate, even if your pour-over will send the property into your trust at your death. You—not your trust—owned it when you died, so probate will be required to transfer the assets to someone or something that is still "living." Your best option is to make it a point to transfer all newly acquired assets into your revocable living trust immediately. 

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  1. Bradley E.S. Fogel. “Trust Me? Estate Planning with Revocable Trusts,” Pages 810-814. Saint Louis University Law Journal.

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