Will/trust – What Did You Do?

We did a will and living trust. A great website to visit for lots of info is http://www.trustmelaw.com/ They also have a seminar coming up if you are more of a verbal than written info person.

Doing the living trust allows you to give more guidance to your guardians/trustees on how money should be disbursed. For example if one of your goals is to fund a college education, you can put strings on disbursing funds to state that they are for education, or if the child does not attend college, you can say distribute at age 30, or whatever age you think they will be responsible enough not to blow through all the money.

The living trust also helps smooth the process and avoid probate and other delays so that your guardian can quickly access the resources needed to care for your child. It was basically a lot of paper shuffling and re-titling assets and adding the trust as a contingent beneficiary on 401(k), etc. for us at the outset, but after that has zero impact day to day.

Also consider doing a regular power of attorney (in case of your temporary or permanent inability to take care of your finances) and your power of attorney for health care where you can spell out what kind of end of life care and life sustaining measures you wish to accept or decline.

Adding a living trust will substantially increase the cost of your legal fees.

We just finished making our will a few weeks ago. We go to David Seil in New Lenox. He is our lawyer for real estate also. He is wonderful. He talked us through the whole thing. His number is ###-###-####.

We did the will last year, and are all set now. Looks like you are doing things that are financially sound.

We went thru legal protection plan that is 25$ a month and the will is the first service that comes along with it. YOu can be done in as little as 2-3 month.

V.

We did our will in February, because my husband and I were taking an oversees vacation without the kids and we needed to have something in legal writing - just in case. We went through an attorney, William Norris in Hinsdale, and I believe it cost $350. You need to identify your guardians, trustees and others. Those that will take care of your children, your money, and to make sure your will and wishes are being carried out in an ethical/legal matter.

I suggest to educate yourself as much as possible about the different types. Go to the library or book store. It's always best to educate yourself even if you decide to use an attorney. This service will cost you about $300-$350. You can also prepare the docs yourself if you feel comfortable. You can get the necessary documents online or at a book store.