What are the benefits of a trust?

What are the benefits of a trust?

Attorney Gadi Zohar explains:

Well first, there are lots of different kinds of trust. But to answer this question, I’m going to talk about your typical revocable living trust that someone would have for passing their assets on to their loved ones at their death. The benefits are first, in probably 90-95% of the cases, a living trust is going to avoid the need for probate.

In fact, it should in 100% of the cases, if there is a need for probate, it means something went wrong. So living trust is going to avoid the need for your assets to go through a court supervised probate process at your death. Also, a living trust is going to instruct someone for taking care of your assets for your benefit and your comfort if you’re living and you’re incapacitated. And that avoids the need for a court supervised conservatorship where a court would be getting into the care of your personal affairs.

So those are the most salient benefits of a living trust. Also, for married couples, a living trust will usually be designed to be as tax efficient as reasonably possible for avoiding the payment of unnecessary estate tax or other taxes in order to protect your assets for future generations.