In this Elder Law Minute, Wes Coulson discusses how a living trust avoids probate by acting like a safe.
Transcript:
Hi! I’m Wes Coulson from Dent-Coulson Elder Law, proudly serving clients throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area and beyond. I’d like to welcome you to our Elder Law and Estate Planning Minute. We do these to help educate people, give them some little tips, and especially to let them know the questions they need to ask, things that they’ve maybe not thought of. Our thought on that is that we can help you best if you realize the things that you need help and that we can help you with. So I hope you enjoy. Thanks!
Sometimes people ask me, “Well, I understand that you say that a living trust avoids probate, but how does it avoid probate?” The best explanation I can give is that I want you to think of a living trust as being like a safe. Let’s say that you buy a home safe and you put your valuables into it, and then somebody breaks into the house. Probate is the burglar here. They can’t get to things because they’re in the safe.
Living trust doesn’t work so well, just like a safe doesn’t work so well, if the burglar comes in and half of your valuables are in the top drawer of the bedroom dresser. Another way of looking at this is in terms of why they call a living trust, a living trust. If you will, people die and trusts live on. So, if you read in the newspaper tomorrow that the head of Google died, you wouldn’t think “well, that’s the end of Google”, you would understand that it goes on just with somebody else in charge.
So that’s what happens with a living trust, it’s an entity, it goes on, just with somebody else in charge. And because you don’t have that loss of continuity, you don’t have to go through probate. Thanks!
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Dent-Coulson Elder Law is dedicated to providing families in the St. Louis area with their Elder Law needs. Our practice areas include Asset Preservation Planning, Veterans Benefits, Medicaid Eligibility, Alzheimer’s Planning, Special Needs Planning, Estate Planning and more. We understand the financial challenges you may face as you and your loved ones grow older. At Dent-Coulson Elder Law, our clients’ well-being is our number one priority. For immediate help, call (618) 632-7000 (IL) or (314) 567-9292 (MO), or Contact Us and we will get in touch as soon as possible.