Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Wills, and Trusts?

The purposes of a trust generally are to avoid taxes, avoid probate or hold funds for someone who has diminished capacity for some reason. If your estate is more than $5m individually or $10m married, then you would be a candidate for a trust. If you need the trust to hold funds for children or someone who can't look out for him or herself, then you'd be a candidate for a trust.

Avoiding probate? For the most part, you're avoiding nothing. The effort and costs and fees put into creating the trust will generally equal the effort and cost and fees laid out for a probate, in my fairly extensive experience. Its six of one, and half a dozen of the other.

Trusts don't magically save any headaches. They can be and often are messed up in their creation and over the lifetime of the Trustor and result in the same disagreements over time. They are not a magic pill by any stretch of the imagination.