What is the difference between Wills and Trusts regarding maintenance?
A Living Trust requires more attention during your lifetime. An estate plan that features a traditional Will does not have significant maintenance costs during your lifetime. However, you can expect to have some additional costs when you make changes to your estate plan to keep it current. If you use a Living Trust, you will also have some additional cost when you make changes from time to time to update your documents. In addition, you need to be careful to transfer newly acquired assets into your Living Trust. While the cost of making these transfers will often be relatively minor, if you forget to transfer new assets into your Trust, it may become necessary to use your Pour-Over Will to transfer these assets into your trust at the time of your death. This will invoke the probate process (and additional costs) that you were trying to avoid.
