August is National Make-A-Will Month

August is National Make-A-Will month. We have an announcement:

Wills are dead. Long live trusts.

I've been doing estate planning for a while now, and I can confidently say that trusts should be the gold standard with wills being the outliers for special circumstances. Tell your mom, tell your cousins, tell your co-workers: all the cool kids are getting trusts now.

As you might remember from history class, we didn't go to war with England over our estate planning laws; we had some other issues to deal with. So we kept all of them and dealt with other more pressing matters. We've BASICALLY been doing estate planning the same way since about 15th Century England. Back then, before picture IDs and electronic records, someone would write a will and then after they died, folks would have to show up in front of Lord Whomever in the funny wig to prove everything. Welp, FINALLY, 600 years later, we found a better way.

A revocable living trust does everything you think a traditional will does (it says who's in charge and who gets what), but it does it completely independent of the court system. You take care of everything NOW so that your loved ones don't have to spend the time and money to settle your estate after you die.

ALL wills have to go to court even if no one is fighting. All wills have to go through probate. Probate is a Latin word that simply means to “prove.” Last year, my average UNCONTESTED probate took about 9 months and about $8,000-10,000. That's ridiculous, right?!? That's with no one fighting! If a fight breaks out? It'll keep going as long as people keep fighting or until the money runs out. Don't put your loved ones through that.

A revocable living trust will make sure that your house passes to your spouse (because, no, that's not automatic even if you're both on the deed). A revocable living trust DOES NOT change your taxes or exemptions for better or worse. A revocable living trust DOES NOT trigger any kind of tax penalty for retirement accounts. A revocable living trust DOES NOT trigger a due-on clause from your mortgage. A revocable living trust DOES NOT need to be complicated and DOES NOT need to change how you live your life.

Come visit us. Let us give you a sound, experienced, legal answer to the “but I heard trusts aren’t good because …” concerns. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about estate planning and we’d be happy to set the record straight. We can serve anyone in Texas, Arkansas, and New Mexico. If you've "been putting this off" for a while and are looking for your motivation, here it is. Let's get it done and get peace of mind for you and your loved ones.

Shelly C. Joyner

with M. Mavrik Gfeller