In this instructional video, estate‑planning attorney Jerry Taylor walks viewers through the four essential components of a complete estate plan and the critical, often‑overlooked step of funding the trust. He begins by explaining revocable living trusts, emphasizing their ability to keep assets out of probate and the role of a successor trustee. He then introduces the pour‑over will, which serves as a backup to capture assets not placed in the trust and to name guardians for minor children. The third component covers documents that operate while the grantor is alive but incapacitated: a durable power of attorney for financial matters, a healthcare power of attorney for medical decisions, and a living will to state end‑of‑life wishes. Finally, he stresses that 90 % of people skip “funding the trust”—the process of retitling assets (real estate, bank and investment accounts, personal property) into the trust’s name—explaining how failure to do so defeats the purpose of the trust and can still lead to probate. He also warns against placing retirement accounts and life‑insurance policies in the trust, advising viewers to keep beneficiary designations current. Throughout, Taylor promotes a free live workshop for deeper guidance and directs viewers to additional videos on trust funding.
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If you've been trying to get your estate plan in order, well, probably have watched a dozen or so videos on the internet by now, and you still aren't sure exactly what you need to do. Well, that's because putting an estate plan together, it's easier said than done. It's a few parts that all work together, and even if one is missing, your family can still end up in probate court. I've been an estate planning attorney for a long time now, decades. And today I'm going to show you exactly the 4 things that every plan needs if you want to be confident that your family is actually protected. Let's dive right in. And everything typically starts with a revocable living trust. First part of a complete plan, and it's the one that I start almost every family off with. Revocable living trust, it's just a, it's a legal document that holds your assets while you're alive, and it explains exactly who is going to get what after you pass away. And revocable means just that. It means that you can change it, you can revoke it, you can add to it, you can cancel it whenever you want to during your life. So you stay in full control of everything that you own for as long as you're alive. Now, the main thing that trust does for your family is keep everything inside of it out of probate court. If you don't know what probate court is, it's just a process that your family has to go through just to get access to what you left them. And when all you have is a will, and typically it's going to take 9 to 18 months, somewhere in that timeframe. And during all of that time, until a judge says so, your family is locked out of your house, your bank accounts, your investments, and they'll be paying thousands and thousands of dollars in court and attorney's fees. And additionally, because probate is a public court process, literally Anyone can look up the records online and see exactly what you owned, what all of it was worth, and who is going to get it. Now, with a trust, none of those things happen because you name someone called a successor trustee to take over the moment that you die. Now, this is someone that you pick ahead of time. You know, usually it's your spouse, your spouse first, and then maybe an adult child or whoever you trust the most. And because you named them inside the trust, the day after you pass, they can start handling everything for your family without a judge's permission and without waiting on some kind of a court order. Now, by the way, right here, before I get into the rest of this plan, if you'd rather be taken through this whole thing in a lot more depth than I'm able to go over in this video, I run a free live workshop that has helped hundreds and hundreds of families keep their loved ones out of probate court. And you can register that just by clicking the first link in the description below. So let's keep going. The will that you still need. Let's talk about that. The second part of a complete plan is a will. And you're probably wondering yourself, Jerry Taylor, why would I even need a will if you just set up a trust? The specific kind of will that you want here is called a pour-over will. And it's different from a normal will. A pour-over will is basically just a backup will. It's like a backstop that catches anything that you forgot to put into your trust, and it will move it into your trust for you after you're gone. So let's say you buy, you know, a, you open up a new bank account or buy a piece of property and you forget to put it in the trust. Pour Over Will is going to make sure it still ends up where it belongs. Now, having said that, catching anything that didn't make it into your trust is just one part of it. But if you have young kids, a will is also where you're going to need to name who would raise those children if you couldn't. Your trust handles your money and your property, but it cannot name a guardian for your kids. So your will is where you do that. This is where you decide who is going to raise those kids if something happens to you and your spouse, instead of leaving that up to a judge that you've never met and don't know anything about. Who is going to handle your money and your medical care? If you can't do so on your own. Now, the first two parts were about what happens after you pass. But this third part I'm about to tell you about, this part covers what happens while you're still alive, but you cannot make decisions for yourself. So this would, you know, this would kick in, for instance, if you had a stroke or a bad accident or, you know, God forbid, something like dementia later in life where you're still alive, but you don't have the capacity to make your own money decisions or tell anyone what medical care you want. Without the right documents in place, your family might not just be able to handle it for you. They might have to go to court and ask a judge for permission to handle those things, your money, and make your medical decisions right at the exact time when they're already dealing with, you know, your crisis. So the first document that handles all of these things, the financial part, is called a durable power of attorney. And it's a document where you name someone to manage your money and your finances if you ever find yourself in a situation where you cannot do it yourself. And that covers paying your bills and managing your bank accounts and dealing with your house and handling anything that is not already inside your trust. And the word durable just means that that power of attorney is going to stay in effect even after you can't make decisions on your own, which is the whole point of having it. And then there's two more documents that you need to know about, and these cover your medical care. And the first one is just called a healthcare power of attorney. And that document is where you name the person that you want to make your medical decisions if you're unable to speak for yourself. And the second document, that's called a living will. And that's where you actually write down what your medical wishes are ahead of time. For example, one of these wishes could be whether you'd want to be kept on life support if you could not recover from whatever condition you had. And this means that no one would have to guess what you would have wanted. That way, the person you trust is the one deciding and they already know exactly what you want. So your family isn't left guessing or fighting with each other over what to do. Now, let's talk about the one step that 90% of people skip. All right? That's the fourth part of this plan. And it's the one that almost everyone literally skips right over. And this step is called funding your trust. And all it really means is moving your assets into the trust so that the trust legally owns your asset or it's the beneficiary of the asset. Because setting up a trust trust on its own, it doesn't automatically put anything inside it. You have to actually go and put the assets into the trust name yourself. So your house, your bank accounts, your investments. And when people skip this funding step, the moment that there's an emergency, no one has the legal authority to step in and make decisions on those assets the way that you would have wanted. You know, you paid for the trust and signed every document, but because the house was never actually put into the trust, that house would still have to go through probate. Probate after your death. Spend all that time and money on the trust, dealing with an attorney maybe, and yet your family still will end up stuck in probate court process, which is what you're trying to avoid all along. Now the good thing is funding your trust, it's really a pretty simple thing to do once you know exactly how each type of asset works. So for your house, you sign a new deed that puts it into your trust name. And then you just record that deed with your county land records office. And then for your bank and your investment accounts, you contact each of those institutions and you put those accounts into your trust name, or you name the trust as the beneficiary of those accounts. Personal belongings, you just sign a simple document that moves them into the trust. A couple of things that you should— that should never go into your trust, you need to know about. Mainly, these are your retirement accounts and your life insurance. Those things pay out directly. To whomever you've named as the beneficiary on those accounts, no matter what your trust or your will says. Part of this step is checking those beneficiaries right now, because if one of those is out of date, that money is going to go to completely the wrong person. Now look, if you want to make sure that all 4 of these steps are put together the right way, you want to make sure you've got a plan that you can be fully confident in. Click the first link in the description below to register for my free live workshop, because I'll walk you through the process on how to do this from start to finish, and you'll learn how to set up your full plan in 30 to 60 days for most people without paying $5,000 to $8,000 for an attorney. And you'll walk away from that knowing that your family will never have to fight, never have to wait or lose money in probate court. So again, the link to register will be at the top of the description. If you want to see exactly how to fund your trust and move all your assets in the right way, then check out this video right over here next.
