Estate Planning - Living Revokable Trust versus Will?

Question

My wife and I are in the process of estate planning. We talked with 2 different lawyers and have 2 different pieces of legal advise:

~1: Establish a Living Revocable Trust. This allows you to avoid probate on assets that do not have beneficiary designations.

~2: Use a Will. Your major accounts and home will pass to your spouse if you ensure the beneficiary designation forms/titles are on file with the correct information. True, any personal property (not held jointly) without a beneficiary may go through probate, but that will be a small portion of your assets.

My question is this: If a couple has a living revolvable trust, one or both of the spouses pass away, is it advisable to have legal council to execute the trust?

The way things are being presented, the Trust is a large upfront cost with no back end costs. The Will is a small upfront cost but a large back end cost.

I am curious if the Trust is a large upfront cost and has significant costs on the back end too.

Answer 1

A trust does have large upfront costs, but it does not have "back end" costs for the remaining trustee.  The successor trustee should be able to adequately handle things without the help of an attorney. However, depending on your amount of assets and how much you want the CFG--control from the grave--a will may be enough for you.  

The lawyer was correct when she/he talked about correctly titling assets. You can put a POD designation on all bank accounts, saying you want to pay a particular beneficiary(s) on death.  This does NOT go through probate.  You can put a TOD designation on stock accounts, real estate, etc. which will transfer to designated beneficiaries upon your death--also without going through probate.  Any annuities, IRA's, life insurance you hold will also not go through probate, as these vehicles have named beneficiaries.

A trust is great when you have a complicated estate with over a couple of million in assets.