The Living Trust Co. is not a law firm and our employees are not lawyers and do not provide any legal advice.

We provide self-help services to prepare all documents based on questions and answers provided by each client. ​

Riverside County Registered LDA 000434 Exp. 6/9/23

Living trusts are not just for very wealthy people, and you do not need a lawyer to set one up. Establishing a trust is just a matter of preparing the correct forms for a living trust, properly executing them, and making sure your trust is funded with your assets. Because it is so important to correctly complete the forms for living trust formation, you can have a registered legal document assistant (LDA) help set up your living trust to make sure this part of the process is done correctly.

Estate planning on your part will make life easier for your family when it is time to settle your estate. Writing a will is a good start, but even if you have a will, the probate process could take a long time and significantly reduce the value of your estate by the time the money reaches your descendants. Furthermore, having a will does not avoid probate if your estate has a value of $184,500. However, it should be noted that the maximum amount of real property (real estate) that can be transferred through the small estate process is $61,500. Creating the required forms for a Living Trust, also known as a Revocable Trust, is an easy solution to this problem. A trust can keep many of your assets from going to probate; instead, it enables them to pass directly to your heirs.

What is the Purpose of a Living Trust? A Living Trust is a legal entity to which you transfer ownership of some of your assets. You can apply for a tax ID number for it, but many Living Trusts operate under your social security number. When you transfer assets to the trust, those assets belong to the trust, not to you. Therefore, they do not become part of the estate that goes through probate after your death.

When you set up a Trust, you specify beneficiaries for various assets of the trust. You also appoint a trustee, an individual to whom you give authority to manage the trust, including transferring money in and out of the trust or to your beneficiaries. During your lifetime, this is you. On the other hand, when you set up the trust, you will also include instructions about who the trustees will be after you die or if you become too ill to continue acting as trustee.

Besides the advantage of avoiding probate, many people choose living trusts as a means of making sure that they and their dependents will be cared for if:
If you become incapacitated DURING your lifetime – who will take care of you and your finances? Can you wait for conservatorship through the court? Will you like who they choose to be making these decisions for you? What will that cost you financially? What will it cost you emotionally if the person you would have wanted is not in charge?

Do you have a disabled beneficiaries. If you have disables children, grand-children or other beneficiary and you leave them an inheritance, will that reduce or eliminate their state or federal benefits?

Are you a blended family? If you pass away before your spouse, can they determine who gets what? Will they own everything and how much will they leave to YOUR children? What if they get remarried? Should your children wait till your spouse passes away to get their inheritance? Even if you do a trust, if you die first, can you spouse change the trust?

Do you want to leave more to your grand-children than your kids? Did you know that was possible? What if your grand-children are minors? Who holds, controls, spends the money until they become adults? At what age would they get their inheritance?

Do you want to place any conditions on a beneficiary getting their inheritance? Wait until a certain age? Until they finish college? Until they get married? Until they get divorced? How/where do you include these stipulations to make sure they are carried out?

So much more…..things you may not have considered, but would want to know!

How to Set Up a Revocable Trust Estate Plan

If you want to prepare a living trust or other estate documents and need to create a simple estate plan to avoid California probate, contact The Living Trust Co.We will prepare living trust documents, certificates of trust, wills, powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives and other routine estate documents. We can also prepare separate estate documents and offer cost-effective estate “packages”.

More specifically, the forms for living trust formation include an individual or couple’s Revocable Trust, Trust Certificate, Declaration of Trust, Will, Financial Power of Attorney, Healthcare Directive, HIPPA waiver, and other incidental documents. After you have set up the trust, you must file a trust transfer deed for each real property asset that you want to transfer into the trust. Funding your trust is the task of transferring all of your assets into your newly created trust. Keep in mind, your asset can be in the form of money and financial products or real estate properties.

Sound confusing? It is a lot of words and documents that you may not be familiar with, but it does not have to be confusing if there is someone there to walk you through it!

We will prepare all of your documents and send a notary to your home to finalize the documents. We make it our mission to make this easy for you and prepare fully legally binding documents that will put your mind at ease for finally doing this. 

It is a good idea to have a professional such as a Legal Document Assistant or a lawyer to prepare all the necessary forms for trust formation for you so the most current and up to date forms are being utilized, all appropriate options/sections are included, and most importantly there is a live person to walk you through the process without endless searches online and questioning if you did it right. Type your paragraph here.

​In the past, making estate plans required hiring a lawyer and spending thousands of dollars on the preparation of legal documents. Even for a small family with a modest estate, the cost of preparing living trusts and other estate plan paperwork often resulted in bumping these items to the bottom of the to-do list. However, in January, 2000, everything changed. When California passed bill AB1418, the state implemented new statutes that allowed qualified non-attorneys to prepare legal documents for individuals who wanted to handle routine legal matters on their own. Today, this statute allows The Living Trust Co to prepare living trust documents and other types of routine legal paperwork for substantially lower costs than using a lawyer! As a result, estate planning has become much more accessible for middle-income families.

 Setting up a living trust does not have to be costly. The documents can be voluminous, with a simple trust package consisting of 80-150 pages. You can now get your living trust documents for a fraction of the cost. We provide our clients with quality estate planning services at affordable prices. Our staff are registered and bonded to provide these service in the safest and a most trusted manner. Our staff members are also licensed notaries who have been through a thorough background check by the State of California. Check out our testimonials page!

If you are one of the people who wants to avoid probate through a Living Trust, you are in the right place. At the Living Trust Co, we do one thing, LIVNG TRUSTS to avoid PROBATE, and we do it well! We provide a complete estate plan for you to avoid probate. Your estate plan includes a will, durable power of attorney, advance health care directives, and burial instructions. And we do all that for one flat price! ​