Think a will is enough to protect your family? It’s not. I’m Sarah Siedentopf. I’m an estate planning attorney in Atlanta, Georgia.

Trusts allow your family and loved ones to avoid probate and make sure that your assets go exactly where you want them.

When we’re talking about protecting family members, loved ones, even yourself, the conversation really needs to include trust as an option and a lot of times as a really quality option. Trusts allow for avoidance of probate.

Probate being the court process that involves filing things, waiting for the court, answering any questions from the court, getting signatures from family members, having a guardian ad litem appointed to give signatures for any minor children involved, notices in the newspaper, filling out more court forms, more waiting. It is a long process. It is a frustrating process.

Oftentimes, the court comes back with questions and things have to be changed. So the probate process is not something that you want your family to have to go through. It’s not so much that we are skipping any responsibilities, we’re still paying your last bills, but we’re not going to court for any permission to do so. We don’t have any waiting periods. There is no time period when necessarily we can’t access bank accounts because no executor has been officially appointed by the court.

It’s all managed by your trust. And the other thing that trusts really help with on a beneficiary end are making sure that your assets do go where you want them to go. You can put creditor protections in place for your beneficiaries. You can put ages for them to receive distributions at. You can put guidelines around what they get and for what purposes so you can be very sure that the people that you love are getting the things that you want and in the terms that you want and in the time period that you want.

The other huge thing that trust can do for you is protect you in case of incapacity. If your assets are funded into a trust, it makes it much easier for your trustee to step in and assist if you are incapacitated. For some reason, banks are much more happy to deal with trustees than they are to deal with agents under power of attorney. So even though it’s theoretically a somewhat similar process, it works more smoothly, and there are less hoops involved.

So trusts are good for avoiding probate, which is great for your family. They are good for making sure that your assets go to the correct people at the correct times in the correct circumstances, and they are good for making sure that if something happens to you, your assets are managed for your benefit smoothly and with no issues.

A will is simply not enough. It should be part of a plan, but it is not enough to protect your family. I strongly believe that a trust really should be part of the conversation for the vast majority of people. So if this is something that you would like to talk about, please do give me a call. Thanks.