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Fees for Living Trusts

We hear of so many varied and different prices being charged for living trusts. What causes this difference in fees?

A complete estate plan for you and your family does not come in boxes or in cans but, rather, from a process that involves your attorney listening to your hopes, dreams, and aspirations for you and your family, followed by him or her making recommendations and giving you options to accomplish your goals.

A living trust is only one piece of a complete estate plan, which would also include a pour-over will, health care powers of attorney, durable funding powers of attorney, a property agreement, memorial and funeral instructions, and provisions for division of personal property.

Depending on the size of the estate, a complete plan might also include generation-skipping tax provisions, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, irrevocable life-insurance trusts, family limited partnerships, limited liability companies, S corporations, and offshore trusts, all of which will need to be customized to fit your family's particular needs.

Some attorneys are more talented than others - like fine art painters, their canvases command higher prices than those of their less skilled colleagues.

Attorneys are free to run their businesses as they see fit as long as they observe the ethics of the profession. Some choose to cut corners, and spend as little time with the client or his or her documentation as possible, and they reflect this preference in a billing system that emphasizes reduced or even cheap legal fees.

However, most attorneys take great pride in their work, and work diligently to make sure it is the best effort they can produce in meeting their clients' needs. Their prices will most generally always be significantly higher than those of their cost-cutting brethren.

Reprinted with permission from Legacy - Plan, Protect & Preserve Your Estate, page 513

"Create the Ultimate Legacy"

A Loving Trust estate plan is a revocable living trust-centered estate plan that contains your special instructions for your own care and that of your loved ones. These instructions are what distinguish Loving Trust estate planning from traditional wills and bare-bones living trusts.

A Loving Trust plan contains other documents which assure your planning needs are totally met. Loving Trust planning is thorough, easy to create, change and control. It allows you to give what you have to whom you want, the way you want and when you want, while saving tax dollars and probate costs. It's the very essence of what constitutes good estate planning.