Will vs Living Trust:

The difference between a will and a revokable living trust are several.  A will is a written document, just like a revokable living trust.  Both documents will pass along assets.  Both documents will name a guardian for your minor children.  Both documents can pass along specific assets that you want a specific person to recieve.  When you're doing a will, your apointing an executor who's going to actually take the document to the probate court, and have that document probated.  Assets remain titled as ownership exists, so if it's a husband and wife, they keep the assets in their names alone.  If you're doing a revokable living trust, it's going to, if it's done properly, avoid probate.  And the way it avoids probate is that, during the lifetime of the trustees and the trustors, they're going to be switching their assets into the name of the trust.  So most of the assets, not all of them, will be owned by the trust, managed the same way as if it was in their own names.  That's how it's avoiding probate.  If there isn't an asset in your name, there isn't anything to probate.  We also don't need to show the court the revokable living trust.  So they're two documents that ultimately end up doing the same function, but the ease and the expense are different, and the way that we end up doing your wishes is going to be different.