Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

The main purpose of the living trust is to avoid probate. Assets with a valid beneficiary designation (life insurance and IRAs, some bank accounts- make sure the beneficiar(ies) are is who you want to be) do not need to be part of the trust. Car and checking can stay out of trust if they add up to less than $100,000.

Just to elaborate, life insurance passes to the named beneficiary immeditely upon yuor death so it is not part of your estate. Thus there is no need to avoid probate for it because it is not there to probate. Unless there is some advantage in having an asset in a trust [there is the general advanatage of perhaps securing it from a judgment against you--but for most people asset protection is not that important], why put it into one.

Your e-mail give the impression that you would be able to understand what is related in legal books written for non-attorneys, such as the Nolo Press series that can be found in most libraries. You should read those books so that you can have a better understanding of what is going on. If the best attorney sometimes makes mistakes or fails to cover everything. It will allow you to ask your attorney more exact questions, such as "if McCovey is playing first with Jimmie Davenport at third and Stu Miller on the mound, with a runner at first, which side of the infield do I lay the suicide squeeze bunt down on."

I would just add that most trusts are worthless for asset protection purposes, because they need to be revokable. Lenders won't loan, and will default existing loans, in most cases when real estate or other assets are put into an irrevokable trust. So unless you need and can pay for a major asset protection plan structure put together by a very sophisticated attorney, and funded by a lot of cash and sophisticated private banking of any loans, forget meaningful asset protection from a trust.