Lawyers sometimes say that the difference between a will and a trust is: do you want to pay me now or have your family pay me later? What that means is that a will is usually much cheaper than a trust. The will however must be probated, whereas a trust is not probated (although on some rare occasions a small portion of it may require it to be probated). However, the cost and time to probate a small portion of a trust is much less than a standard probate. Probating a will costs money which if the property or assets were just transferred into a trust instead would allow you to avoid Court, so it becomes much less expensive in a trust after death to administer it and the transfer of the prorperty. The trust also allows ones estate to be private.  On the contrary, a will and its proceedings are public record. There are also some very attractive tax advantages that many trusts offer.

Trusts have a number of labels and offer a number of different functions depending on what your needs are. There are Special Needs Trusts, Charitable Trusts, Qualified Personal Trusts, Irrevokable Life Insurance Trusts, Charitable Remainder Trusts, Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts and Family Trusts, Support Trusts, Discretionary Trusts. This is not an exclusive list of trusts just a list of the most common ones. With an aging America and Nevada lawmakers trying to attract retirees to our area, they have created a new type of Trust that is now available know as the "Dynasty Trust," which provides substantial returns to the next generations of a family.

In todays computer world a layperson looks online and finds a cheap form for a will or trust and thinks they can just fill it out and be done with it. Well, that may be true for some people but their family, after that persons  passing, may wish more detail and care had been followed. The wrong trust could cost the estate more than 40% in federal estate taxes. That means out of every $100,000 in the estate $40,000 goes to the federal government, just to save a couple thousand dollars on a lawyer. At Hardy Law Group, our standard estate planning trust starts at less than $3000. Shop that price around, and you will see we charge less than others and most importantly, that is less than half of what the normal probate costs.

We also have the advantage of having a family law attorney available on staff to help address guardianship issues and several business litigation attorneys to address any issues that may arise in a family business or business holdings.

We are also trial lawyers. Disputes are common in wills and trusts cases because of poor pre-death planning. We can help. Call us today!