Trust Preparation

Park Ridge Living Trust Attorneys

In more than 30 years of creating estate plans for business owners and individuals, our lawyers have drafted fewer than 20 simple wills. The vast majority of our clients choose to do their estate planning with trusts.

While trusts are more expensive than wills-about $2,200 to $2,400 for a trust compared to about $400 for a simple will-they are more powerful as an estate planning tool. A living trust is also less expensive in the long run, since it allows your heirs to avoid probate.

Here are some of the advantages of a trust:

1. Confidentiality. A will and the subsequent probate proceeding are public information. If you don't want the public to know how much you had and who you left it to, you should create a trust, which assures you privacy.
2. Minimize Estate Taxes. If your estate exceeds the credit shelter amount (currently $2 million), you need a trust to save you from paying money needlessly to the Internal Revenue Service.
3. Avoid the expense and the delay of probate. Even the simplest probate proceeding costs about $3,000 and will take from eight to nine months. The majority of probate proceedings cost more and take longer. You can avoid probate by creating a living trust.
4. Respected by financial institutions. Trusts have been around for hundreds of years and are respected by all financial institutions, whereas powers of attorney outside of Illinois (or even inside Illinois) may not be recognized by banks and brokerage houses.
5. Protect the interests of minor children. When children inherit under a will, they will need a court-appointed guardian to manage the money for them until they are age 18. Then they will receive all of the money at once (think money and motorcycles). Through a living trust (or a testamentary trust as a part of a will) you can decide when and how children will inherit.

We invite you to contact living trust lawyer John Pembroke to schedule a consultation.