Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

Re: living trust

You really only need to see an attorney when you make changes to the living trust or for administration reasons (essentially your trustee might need to see an attorney when you pass away or become incapacitated, etc). Don't stress out over it, if you need to make changes (amendments) that is when you should start looking for a new attorney. Unless, of course, you have a very large, complex, or special needs estate and you want to make sure someone is farmiliar and ready to handle any issues. In which case you can speak to a local estate planning attorney to assist you.

Hope this helps.

Re: living trust

Yes.

Re: living trust

You probably don't need an attorney to "handle" your living trust. You can, of course, hire us or any other attorney that does estate planning work. But, frankly, most people don't require an attorney and can take care of these things themselves. Unfortunately, though, people are either very badly educated or not at all regarding how to prepare for the certainty of death and the likelihood of disability prior to death.

Before you get an attorney and pay more in fees, I suggest you get and read my book "How You Can Protect Your Loved Ones in the Event of Death or Disability (Without Paying a Legal Fees}" Not only does it explain virtually everything you need to know in plain English, but it contains in the Appendix a copy of the Legacy Living Trust Package. This is a complete trust package for the Middle Class including a Living trust for single or for married people, a durable general power of attorney, an advance healthcare directive, an Abstract of Trust, all necessary transfer documents and instructions.

Having taught literally hundreds of seminars to thousand of regular middle class people, I have learned how to answer the most important questions in language understandable to all. Having learned over 30 years that most people that go to an attorney to pay $1200 or more for these documents don't understand the language in the unnecessarily complicated documents, don't understand what they are doing and why, and ofen make common but avoidable mistakes, I created the Legacy Living Trust Package.

You can order the book on-line at Amazon.com, but, it is better to order at www.IWant2CreateMyLegacy.com. If you order there, you will get a free special report entitled "The Seven (7) Most Common Mistakes Made by the Middle Class in Planning For the Inevitability of Death and the Likelihood of Disability, and How to Avoid Them." This report alone could save you and your family hundreds of times the cost of the book.

Again, the book is, to my knowledge, the only one written for regular people in the middle class, and it contains in an appendix the Legacy Living Trust Package, which to my knowledge is the only complete fill-in the blanks trust package written in simple English ("People Ease", not "Legalese") that will be valid in every State in the US.

Once you have read the book, read your trust document. If it says what you want it to say, fine. If not, you can amend the terms of the trust by completing the Legacy Living Trust Package, giving the trust the same name as the earlier trust. It will then just be an amended trust. In any case you should do another Advance Healthcare Directive since federal law has affected those documents and they should now contain a HIPAA qualifed release of medical information. The form in the Legacy Living Trust Package complies in this and other respects and is available if you want as a separate document on-line at the IWant2CreateMyLegacy.com website.

Re: living trust

It's not clear from your question if the trust was ever set up? If not, request some or all of your money back, and hire a new estate planning lawyer to (most likely) start over.

Otherwise, if it's done, and has been reviewed and updated lately, and no major changes to you, your assets, and final wishes have occurred, then you won't need an estate planning attorney immediately. You should your plan reviewed from time to time and when changes occur, however.