I was searching for information about Probate and could not find it in the first 10 pages of searches.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that I found a really good article by Suze Orman

"Where There's Only A Will, Your Family Will Pay".

The main title is

"Why You Also Need a Trust"
Subtitled: Don't Make Dying Harder Than It Needs to Be

By Suze Orman

I know this isn't going to win me any awards for being Suze Sunshine, but we need to talk about death. Yours. More to the point: I want to talk to you about what you need to do now so that when you die your family and friends have an easy time making sure your wishes are carried out. And if you follow my advice, you will also have a document that can take care of you if you become ill.

My guess is that right now many of you are assuming you already possess the document I am talking about. Not so fast. If you think the will you may have locked away in the safe deposit box is all you need, I am here to tell you that you could be seriously wrong.

Today, a plain old will is simply not the way to go in most cases. I believe just about everyone would be better off with a trust - a revocable trust, to be specific - rather than a will. I know, I know. You hear the word "trust" and you think, "Hey Suze, what are you smoking? I'm no Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey, so why do I need a trust?"

My friends, revocable trusts aren't just for folks with oodles of zeros on their net worth statement. Anyone who answers YES to even one question below should seriously consider getting a revocable trust. Before I explain how useful and smart a revocable trust is for you and your beneficiaries, I first want to make it abundantly clear why a will alone could be an expensive pain in the derriere.

Do You Need A Trust?

Here are 11 Questions to Ask Yourself.

If you answer yes to any of them you should establish a trust.

1. Do you have a financial interest in a business?
2. Do you have beneficiaries under the age of 25?
3. Do you have children with special needs, meaning they will never be able to financially support
themselves due to a physical or mental disability?
4. Are you in a second or third marriage?
5. Are you on bad terms with any of your heirs?
6. Are any family members physically ill?
7. Is any family member developmentally disabled?
8. Is any family member in need of creditor protection?
9. Is any family member bad at managing money?
10. Do you own real estate or real estate in another state?
11. Is your estate worth close to $1,000,000?

Where There's Only A Will, Your Family Will Pay

A will is a legal document that states how you intend your assets to be distributed when you die; it identifies to whom you wish to leave your money and property (your estate).

So let's say your mom owns a home in California. The home is worth $200,000 and has a mortgage on it of about $190,000. (Yeah, I know; anyone living in California these days would already be dead, from shock, if they found a decent home for $200,000. But just humor me for the sake of a simple example.) And let's say you moved in with Mom after your high-tech job disappeared; she loves your company and makes plans to leave you the house in her will. She got a will because when she asked her attorney about whether a trust would make sense, he told her there was no need. Besides, all her friends told her they had wills, so Mom figured that was best.

Next, Mom dies. You have the will declaring the house is yours. The only problem is that the deed to the house, the legal document that states who the owner is, is still in your mom's name. The only way for you to get the title into your name is to go to court. You, you have to go through court to get Mom's clear and express wishes carried out. This court process is known as probate.

It is not fun. First, the probate judge authenticates the will and makes sure that you are indeed entitled to your mom's house. Then the judge will sign the deed over to you. Sounds simple, except that it can take forever. In California, that simple process can take nine months to two years. And if you live in a state like California, be prepared to pay statutory probate fees. That word "statutory" means that the fees are set by the state. What's nutty is in the case I just described you would have to pay about $10,300 to the executor and lawyer who handled the probate. That's because the probate fees are based on the value of the home, not the equity the owner has built up. So even if you only have a measly $10,000 in equity and a $190,000 mortgage to carry, the probate fee is based on the $200,000 home value - making the fee to secure your rightful asset more than the asset itself!

The rules on how probate is handled vary from state to state. In states where there is no statutory fee structure, lawyers may be free to set their own rates. The bottom line is that if you rely on a will you are going to require your family to spend time and money to get your estate settled. Catch my drift? At a time when they are grieving your loss, you will have inadvertently added more stress and work for them by your use of a will.

If You Love Your Family, Trust them

That brings us to option #2: a revocable trust.

Let's define a few of the terms you should know to understand how a revocable trust works. "Trust" is the name of the document. "Revocable" means you can make changes at any time. And here's how it can make life easier. If Mom had set up a trust rather than just a will, she could have taken the steps while she was alive to transfer the title of her home from her individual name into the name of the trust. So rather than Mom Yahoo on the deed, it would read Mom Yahoo, trustee for the Mom Yahoo Trust. She is the "trustor" or "settlor," the one who created the trust. She is also the "trustee," the person who makes all the decisions over the trust. While she is alive everything in the trust - in this case, the house - is completely under her control. She can sell the house, refinance, take out a reverse mortgage, or change who is to inherit the home. She is free to do anything she wants with that house while she is alive. But the great thing is that when she dies there's no need to schlep off to court and go through probate. Control of the contents of the trust automatically passes to the beneficiary, without any court action or public financial disclosure. All that is required is a death certificate and a trust document that runs through which beneficiary is to receive which asset.

No Kidding Around
Revocable trusts are especially important if you have young children. The revocable trust gives you more flexibility in determining how your children will inherit your assets. Don't tell me you don't know someone who inherited a lot of money when they were young and ran threw it quicker than a New York minute. And if you are a single parent with young kids, a trust is twice as important. If something happens to you, how can you be sure the person designated in your will as the custodian of your young child's money is capable of doing that?

Then there's all the court hassles. If all you have is a will and life insurance, and your five-year-old child is the sole beneficiary, the insurance company won't release the money without a court guardianship being created. That can cost as much as $10,000. It also gives the court the right to decide how the money is used. Oftentimes the court will deny the guardian the use of these funds to support the child if other funds, like social security for orphans, are available. The court will order the life insurance proceeds to be kept in a blocked account that can't be touched until the child is 18. Then when the child is 18, they get all the money. Yikes. That is surely not your intention. You want your child to be raised on social security and then be free to blow the insurance payout when they are 18?

A revocable trust sidesteps all these issues. There is no need for probate guardianship.

What a Good Lawyer Should Deliver

When you go to see a lawyer, this is how they should charge you and what they should do for you.

1. Your lawyer should quote you an up front fee to create all your documents. Do not let them charge you on an hourly basis? Your up front fee should run around $1,500 to $2,500, depending on the complexity of your situation.

2. After the document is created, the lawyer should sit down with you for two to four hours to go over every word of that revocable trust and make sure you understand it.

3. Your lawyer's fee should include the funding of the trust, which is an essential step. This is where the lawyer has the titles to all your assets - bank accounts, real estate, brokerage accounts, etc. - changed from your individual name to the name of the trust. If this isn't done then your trust is not funded, and your assets will be governed by your will and not your trust. In other words, without funding you've got a worthless document. The legal term is empty trust. You can do the funding yourself, but when you are paying a lawyer to create the trust, they should do it for you. The more assets you have that require title changes, the more the lawyer is going to charge.

4. The fee should also cover the creation of a pour-over will. As we discussed earlier, this document will take care of all the assets that are not in trust.

5. Lastly, your trust documents should include the creation of a durable power of attorney for health care, to protect you in case of a life-threatening illness.

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