Utah Wills Versus Trusts

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Utah Wills Versus Trusts: Find The Best Fit For Your Families Needs

Clients often start a consultation wanting to know what the difference is between wills and trusts. The biggest difference is probate. Probate is the legal process of dividing up and paying off a person’s estate after someone dies. Probate is handled in court. When someone dies without a will the probate judge applies default Utah law to determine a deceased person’s heirs.

A Will DOES NOT keep a person’s estate out of probate; rather, a will is a set of instructions to the probate judge on how to distribute the estate. If there is no will, the judge applies the default rules from the Utah Probate Code. A will is a very important document, especially for parents with minor children or other dependents, because a will is the most common place to designate the people who serve as a guardian for minor children in event of a parent’s death. The rules for executing a will are very precise and should be handled with care.

Utah Living Trust

A living trust, sometimes called a revocable trust or a family trust is an agreement that can hold title to a person’s assets during life and also contains language managing those assets when a person dies. The idea is that if a person does not technically own anything at the time of death then probate is unnecessary. Therefore, unlike a will, a trust DOES skip probate court proceedings. This allows a deceased person’s family to manage the estate without being overseen by a court.

This makes the overall process of administering the estate far cheaper and faster.

Another advantage of the trust over the will is its flexibility. A will is not designed to hold assets long term, so after a person’s death the will can do nothing with property by itself other than direct where assets go. A trust can hold money and other belongings for extended periods of time, can distribute them quickly or even hold them for use by future generations.  Furthermore, a trust is freely revocable and amendable during the lifetime of the trustmaker. Following the death of the trustmaker, the trust becomes irrevocable and its terms become permanently binding on those designated as beneficiaries of the trust.

Finally, a key difference between a Will and Trust is that the will is designed to be used exclusively after someone has passed away. A will grants no authority over a person’s estate while they are still alive. In contrast, a Trust is designed to protect an estate even when the trustmaker is still alive. In the trust, the trustmaker assigns who will take over the trust in the event of incapacity. When properly funded, a Utah trust can help protect an incapacitated person’s assets by designating the right people in advance to handle finances if someone loses the ability to manage it by themselves. Without a plan for incapacity, an estate can be left vulnerable to exploitation. Furthermore, court may be required in order to appoint a guardian over an incapacitated adult. A Utah trust plan can avoid this common lifetime dilemma and expense whereas a Utah Will only deals with what a person leaves behind after death.

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