The Steward's Desk · Estate planning
Two documents, two different jobs. Here's what each covers, what probate changes, and how to tell which one you need.
Jesse Plunkett, CEPA®, CRPC®
July 12, 2026 · Meet your advisor · 
A will names who inherits your property, appoints an executor to carry that out, and, for parents, nominates guardians for minor children. It only controls assets owned in your name alone with no beneficiary attached, and it takes effect through probate, a court-supervised process, after you die.
The guardianship piece alone makes a will worth doing for any parent, whatever the balance sheet looks like. It's the one place the legal system asks, in advance and in writing, who should raise your kids.
Most people get to it late. A Pew Research Center survey of US adults conducted September 2-8, 2025 and published that November found that Americans generally don't have a will or a living will until they reach their seventies, though roughly eight in ten of those 80 and older do. Read that as a description of habit rather than of need. The years when a will matters most, when children are small and the household depends on one or two incomes, are precisely the years most people haven't written one.
What a will does not control is just as important. Accounts with named beneficiaries skip the will entirely, which is why I wrote a separate piece on how beneficiary designations override your will.
Probate is the court process that validates your will, oversees the payment of your debts, and transfers what's left to your heirs. It becomes public record, it takes months in many states, and its cost varies with where you live and how complicated the estate is. It is rarely the catastrophe it gets made out to be, but it is slow, public, and worth planning around.
A revocable living trust holds assets you retitle into it while you're alive. At your death, those assets pass to your beneficiaries without probate, privately, on whatever schedule you wrote into the document. It can also name someone to manage things if you become incapacitated. You keep full control while living and can change it at any time.
The catch is the word "funded." A trust only governs what has actually been titled into it, and unfunded trusts are one of the more common findings when I review a new client's estate documents. The binder gets signed, the retitling never happens, and the trust sits empty. The unglamorous paperwork step is what makes the whole thing real.
A trust also doesn't replace a will outright. Attorneys typically pair it with a short "pour-over" will that catches anything left outside the trust, and guardians for minor children are still named in a will.
| Will | Revocable living trust | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to create | Lower. A simpler document to draft. | Higher up front, because drafting plus retitling assets takes more attorney time. |
| Probate | Goes through it. The court supervises the transfer. | Assets titled in the trust skip it. |
| Privacy | Becomes public record when filed with the court. | Stays private. The terms are not filed publicly. |
| Control over timing | Heirs generally receive property outright once probate closes. | Can stage inheritances by age or milestone and set terms for how the money is used. |
| Upkeep | Update after major life events. | Update after major life events, plus keep new accounts and property titled to the trust. |
| The usual verdict | Often enough when the estate is simple, heirs are adults inheriting outright, and privacy is a low concern. | Often earns its cost with minor children, property in more than one state, privacy concerns, or heirs who need structure. |
For many households, a solid will plus correct beneficiary designations covers it. A trust starts earning its cost when you want privacy, own property in more than one state, have minor children or heirs who shouldn't inherit everything at once, or want a smooth handoff if you ever can't manage things yourself.
My role sits on either side of the legal drafting, not in it. I don't write estate documents, and you want an attorney who does this daily. What I do is help you get clear on what you need before that meeting, coordinate with the attorney you choose, and then make sure your account titling and beneficiary forms match the documents once they're signed. That last step is where estate plans most often break.
Reviewing what you have, or figuring out where to start, is a normal first project to do together. A short call is the place to start.
No. A will is the instruction manual for probate, not a way around it. The court still validates the document, debts still get paid, and the transfer still runs on the court's timeline. Avoiding probate takes different tools: beneficiary designations, transfer-on-death registrations, joint titling, or a funded living trust.
Your state's intestacy laws decide who inherits, using a fixed family formula, and a court appoints an administrator. For a married parent the outcome is often close to what you'd have chosen, but not always, and your family gets less clarity at a hard time. A basic will removes that uncertainty.
No. The best reasons for a trust are practical rather than tied to net worth: minor children, a blended family, property in more than one state, privacy, or wanting heirs to receive money in stages. Plenty of wealthy estates run fine on wills; plenty of modest ones benefit from trusts.
No. Estate documents should come from a licensed attorney. My job is the step before and after: getting clear on what you need, coordinating with the attorney you choose, and then lining up account titling and beneficiary forms with the documents once they're signed. That last step is where plans most often break.