What is a Revocable Trust?

You have a few options to consider when creating an estate plan – for instance, should you create a will or a trust?  For many a revocable trust, or also known as a living trust, is a great option because of the benefits it provides.

A revocable can be thought of a as a will replacement.  Rather than directing your assets toward the court system, which is Probate.  Assets are directed to a private entity called a trust.  A revocable trust is just that revocable.  It can be amended anytime and a revocable trust offers flexibility during the lifetime of the person who created a trust.

You can think of a trust as a backpack. And let say that your backpack that remains open during your life.  You can add things to the backpack and you can remove things.  You state who will get the contents of your backpack when die and you can change your mind at any time.  When you die, the backpack is zipped shut and whatever is the backpack is distributed to your beneficiaries according to your instructions. 

That’s how a revocable trust works.

Here are some advantages of a revocable trust:

1. No Probate Court

Skipping the probate process is one of the main benefits of a revocable trust. Probate is a court proceeding whereby your personal representative is responsible for the payments of your debsts and distribution of your assets and is generally supervised by a judge.

Probating an estate can be time consuming, cumbersome and can be expensive, which are reasons enough to want to avoid it.

By placing assets in revocable trust or by naming the trust as the beneficiary on non-probate accounts, these assets will be distributed by the terms you set in the trust and will do so free of court supervision 

2. Flexible

Revocable trusts are flexible and you can make changes or amendments to the trust up until your death.

3. Privacy

A revocable trust is not made public upon your death and your estate will be distributed in private. 

4. Assets Available at Death

A revocable trust allows money to be available immediately after death.  The trustee of the trust will be able to use the money to pay for estate taxes, administrative expenses and debts.  You don’t have to go through the probate process and have the assets tied up.

So those basics of a revocable trust.  It’s a foundational piece of an estate plan and its something you should consider getting.

So That’s all I have for you today.  Again, I’m Scott Aubrey from Aubrey Law and thank you for tuning in.  If you have any questions or want to talk with me for free, then go to estateplanmeeting.com and schedule a time to talk.  You can see my schedule and pick the time that works best for you.

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I hope you learned something from this video and thank you again for tuning in and I’ll talk to you soon.