Why Would I Need a Pour Over Will If I Have a Trust?

There are some intricacies to consider when you are planning your estate. This is why it is important to work with a licensed estate planning attorney when you are preparing for the future transfer of your assets. If you use some type of online download to create your own plan, you may make mistakes that yield unintended negative consequences.

For example, suppose you create a revocable living trust with a download that you purchased online. Would you know that you should also have a certain type of will in place called a pour over will?

Let’s look at the purpose of a pour over will.

Personal Assets

When you create a trust such as a revocable living trust, you fund the trust with assets. For one reason or another, you may not place everything that you will be passing along to your loved ones in the trust right away. In addition to this, you may acquire property after you have created and funded the revocable living trust.

The primary reason why you would create a revocable living trust would be to facilitate the transfer of monetary assets to your loved ones outside of the process of probate. When you maintain personal possession of property through to the time of your death, it becomes probate property. It is not distributed to the heirs to your estate until the process of probate has run its course.

Probate can be time-consuming, taking anywhere from a number of months to multiple years in complicated cases. Most people would like to see their loved ones receive their inheritances in a timely, hassle-free manner. When you use a revocable living trust to facilitate the transfer of assets, probate is not a factor. The heirs to the estate receive their inheritances quickly and efficiently.

If you were in personal possession of property at the time of your death, it would become probate property even if you have a revocable living trust. With a pour over will you allow the trust to capture any assets that may remain in your personal possession at the time of your death. This is why you should have a pour over will even if you have a revocable living trust.

Living Trusts: Calculating the Benefits

We would like to invite you to download our free special report on living trusts that is entitled Living Trusts: Calculating the Benefits. This report takes an in-depth look at revocable living trusts, and it is available to our readers free of charge at the present time.

You can obtain access through this website. To download your copy of the report, click this link and follow the simple instructions: Free Report on Revocable Living Trusts.

Blaine Peterson
Attorney
Parman & Easterday