Hi.
I'm Lee Phillips, and I'm an attorney.
And I deal with a lot of trusts.
And the question I'm going to address for two seconds
is, can I write my own trust?
The answer is, yeah, you can write your own trust.
In fact I'll be willing to bet that if you get the right kit
and you understand what you're doing,
you can write a better trust than probably 50, 60,
80% of the lawyers out there on the street.
Because all they're doing is using a form
from their form book, and half the time they don't understand.
So you can definitely write your own trusts.
Question is, do you want to?
The answer is depends.
If you fit within-- let's say you're
doing a living revocable trust.
We're going to avoid probate.
That's all you're doing.
You're avoiding probate.
We don't worry about estate taxes, just probate.
If you just want to avoid probate,
you can definitely write your own trust.
And as long as you define how the property goes
to the beneficiaries after you die, fine.
You've done a good job, provided you understand the trust.
Because in that case, the writing--
the actual written document isn't nearly as important
as you operating or maintaining or using
the trust during your lifetime.
There are basically three ways that you can create a trust.
You can pay the lawyer.
I like that.
OK.
Pay the lawyer all you want.
And if you've got a taxable estate-- what's
a taxable estate?
Uh, federal we're running a little over $5 million today.
There are 16 states that have estate taxes,
in addition to federal tax.
So if you're under $5 million, don't worry about the federal.
States run $1 to $2 million, depending
upon which state you're in.
And if you get into the other states, other than the 16,
don't worry about it at all.
So you have to know what your state does.
So if you've got an estate tax issue,
it may well be worth having the lawyer write it for you,
because there's a lot of money on the table.
If you have a very complicated distribution pattern.
I want the kids to get this here,
and I want to set up a trust for the education of my grandkids,
and I want to do this and I want to do that.
Then maybe you need to have-- well, you're
probably going to need the lawyer to do it for you.
And I will spend an hour on one paragraph,
and the client reads it and says, well that's wonderful.
Says exactly what I want it to say.
Well, yeah, but it was really hard to write.
If you're like the 98% of the people who
want to leave it equally to the kids,
you want to avoid probate, we're not worried about estate taxes.
Fine.
Do your own.
You've basically got two choices.
One.
There are lots of computer programs, legal doom type
things, I mean LegalZoom, where you
answer the question, and then the computer
based upon the answer to the question,
puts in a piece of the trust.
I don't like that system too well,
because I don't know why the computer gave me that piece
and what other pieces I might have had.
Yeah, I answered a question, but if I'd
known that I could have had this piece,
then I would have answered the question differently.
So you answer the questions, and it spits out
this document for you, and that's what you end up with.
You've still got to use it.
And they never teach you how to use it.
They give you the document and say, here you go.
Have at it.
It doesn't work.
85% to 90% of the people who get a trust to avoid probate,
family still goes through probate.
We talk about that in a lot of the YouTube videos.
But to avoid probate, divide it equally.
Yeah, they work.
They're short, because they're pitching to the lowest
common denominator.
There are a couple of kits that you
can buy that will allow you to do trusts.
The advantage there is you can do a dozen trusts
with the same kit.
You do one for you, one for mom, one for dad, you know,
the whole family.
So that's an advantage.
Nolo Press out of San Francisco, the Bay Area,
they have a pretty good one.
And would you believe that I think I have a pretty good one?
Legalees Corporation, L-E-G-A-L-E-E-S dot com,
and you can see the kit that will allow you to do
the trusts.
And it's not answer the question, put in the piece.
It's a listen to an audio.
I'm going to discuss this piece or this issue with you,
and then give you a couple of ways that you can address it.
You use one of those pieces.
So you build the trust.
But I'm trying to teach you how to use the trust
and what the trust actually means.
And you've got to know what it means,
and you've got to use it, or the trust is no good to you.
That's where the lawyers screw up.
Is it really screw up?
Might not be.
Because I can charge you the big bucks for the trust,
and then when you die it doesn't work,
so the family has to come back and probate it.
95% of the time they come back to the same lawyer
who drafted the trust.
And oh, they're mad.
And they say hey, you drafted this trust.
It didn't work.
And the lawyer will always produce a letter.
In the fine print, it says you have to do this, this this.
And the lawyer says, well dad didn't do this.
I told him to do it.
I even gave it to him in writing.
But the trust failed.
So I go through in several hours of audio CDs, audio training,
download, whatever.
And I teach you how to use the trust.
I want you to know how to use it.
It's not hard.
So, do it yourself.
That's fine, unless you're taxable or really complicated.
Either use the computer system where it generates it.
I don't like that as well I like the kits that try
and let you build your own trust,
and you can do as many trusts as you want, once you get the kit.
So do-it-yourself trusts.
Yeah.
I think they're OK.