The Revocable (Living) Trust is a basic tool for modern estate planning. By using one, you can manage your assets during your life and pass them on at death without need of a court supervised, lengthy and expensive probate proceeding.

The living trust should be considered whenever:
      1.      you own real property or   
      2.      your estate has a value of over $100,000

How Does It Work?
As the word implies, a trust involves placing things with a person under conditions where you trust that person to act in your best interests. The participants in a trust are a

(1) Trustor, also called a settlor, who is the person who creates the trust and transfers property to it,

(2) A trustee, or the person who receives the things and acts on behalf of the settlor/trustor,

(3) And a beneficiary, who is the person who benefits from the terms of the trust.

State law imposes many terms and conditions under which the trustee must act with regard to the trust property. Others are provided by the document that creates the trust. The trustee is bound to follow both the conditions imposed by law and those in the trust document.

Foremost among the terms provided by law is that a trustee is a fiduciary, or a person who has a high standard of conduct and must act only for the benefit of the intentions of the settlor/trustor.

The title "living trust" is used to refer to a trust that is set up to circumvent the problems inherent in probate proceedings and allow for estate planning and tax saving.

Living trusts usually contain instructions for managing the property placed in the trust during the life of the trustee and also provides for what will happen when he or she dies. In this sense, it replaces most of the function of a Will (we suggest, however, that you have a Will in addition to a living trust).

The settlor/trustor, or person who creates the trust, places some or all of their property into the trust. That means you transfer title to those items to a trustee to manage the property according to the instructions in the trust document.

In the case of a living trust, the settlor/trustor is almost always also the trustee and the primary lifetime beneficiary. The law, in its almost mystical wisdom, allows you to split yourself up in this way - you can be a settlor/trustor, trustee and beneficiary all at the same time.

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