Hi Lee Phillips here.
I want to talk to you today
about a reasonable price for a living revocable trust.
The living revocable trusts are complex
to simple
so there's a big variation
they are anywhere from 3 pages to 100 pages long
depending upon what you get the price is going to vary
and you can even do them yourself
legal doom I think charges $600-700 for the living revocable trust
and you get them online
I have a kit for you that does them
you can do them yourself
you can do it for your mom, your dad, yourself
and the funny thing is
his mom and dad's trust looks about like her mom and dad's trust
looks about like your trust
lawyers don't create new
documents for everybody that walks in off the street
most of it, 95% of it is boilerplate.
So back to the price
what's the price going to be?
Well if you're in California, your insurance agent
and your accountant
and a half a dozen other people under California law
can do living revocable trusts.
in most states it's the lawyer only
and Californians pay more for everything anyway so
when we're talking a price it doesn't matter
whether the accountant's doing it or the lawyer's doing it
you're gonna pay a chunk
chunks
I'm gonna say bare minimum for the lawyer these days is about $1000
well I'm gonna say $1500
let's say $1500
nah, you're not gonna get it for $1,000
$1500 that's the bare minimum
a really good price in hometown America for mom and pop today
let's say anywhere from $2,000-$5,000
for the living revocable trust.
If you're under two, ehhhh
I don't know
if you're over five well something's got to be more complicated
you're in the big glass buildings downtown
and the lawyer just charges more
I mean I'm stunned of what lawyers charge in downtown Manhattan these days
in fact if you're in downtown Manhattan you're not $2000-$5000
you're $10,000-$15,0000
I'd pretty much guarantee that.
So it somewhat depends on where you are as well.
Then the lawyer isn't going to charge you by the hour
for your living revocable trust
he's going to charge you by the piece
the package
the package is going to include the living revocable trust
and then it's gonna include a pour-over will
that's different than the standard testamentary will
because it doesn't distribute the property
it "pours" it all over
into the living revocable trust
and we have a YouTube on pour over wills
so it's going to pour it over into the trust.
The trust is going to distribute the property.
Then you're often going to have a durable power of attorney included in this package
and that may include HIPPA stuff
it might include medical directive
living will
that sort of thing.
This all comes in a package together.
The lawyer will usually
if you give him the deeds
the property descriptions
he'll usually prepare deeds
to move the property from you
into the living revocable trust.
It might include a Schedule A
but we have YouTube's on Schedule As
or the schedules for the trust
they're worthless basically
you're gonna have to do that
so you're gonna get the package
the trust, the will, the power of attorney, the durable power of attorney
and that's gonna be your basic package.
You'll get an instruction set
that teaches you how to move property into the trust
that sort of thing
It may be in a nice binder
it could be in fancy leather binder
all sorts of different variations
that lawyers do
I just wrap mine in a blue paper
and put some staples on it.
The blue paper and the staples
go to the evidence
that you haven't undone that
and the document hasn't been tampered with.
If it's in a binder you can take the pages out
three-ring binder all day long, right?
Well, we want some evidence that it hasn't been tampered with
so I just use a blue paper.
At any rate
hometown USA today
easy distribution to the kids equally when mom and dad die
no fancy life trusts
and it's not taxable
if you've got an estate tax issue
price is going to go up
because it becomes more complicated
we have the a/b trust and all that sort of stuff that we have to deal with
so $2,000-$5000 is not unreasonable today
hometown USA
for your living revocable trust