Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Pennsylvania

(Buzzer sound) wrong! Just because a will was drafted by an attorney does not mean it was filed at the courthouse. Unless the county where you reside allows wills to be filed for safekeeping, wills are never filed until such time as a person dies.

Before you rip up your will, understand that you will still need a will with a revocable living trust. It will be a different kind of will called a "pour-over" will.

Since you are going to have a revocable living trust drafted, then I assume that you will have it done by a lawyer. When the lawyer drafts the new revocable living trust and pour over will for you the new will should contain a clause in it that says "I hereby revoke all prior wills ..." or something like that.

Other ways you can revoke a will are to tear it up, obliterate it, cross it out, draw a line through the pages or burn it.

Before you go through this exercise, exactly why do you want a revocable living trust? Do you have more than $5 million in assets? Do you own multiple real properties or real property in several states? In such case you probably should have a trust. If not, then why have a trust? You have not gone to one of those hotel ballroom seminars have you? These trust packages are put out by trust mills and may or may not be drafted by a PA lawyer. You will be throwing your money away if you are going down this road.

A revocable living trust will not dispense with you having a will or even a need for probate and it may not even avoid inheritance tax.

You really need to discuss this with an experienced PA estate & trust lawyer.