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As an estate planning and elder law attorney, my clients often ask me if they should have a revocable living trust. With the increased expense of probate and the overuse of the court system, a revocable living trust can be a preferable estate planning option. In addition to avoiding probate, there are many benefits to holding your assets in a revocable living trust.

1. Providing for You if You Become Incompetent. If you are competent, you will generally be your own trustee. However, if you are unable to make decisions for yourself, your trustee or successor trustee has a fiduciary obligation to act in your best interest to make sure that you are provided for during your lifetime.

2. Avoiding Probate. You will generally not need to file a probate proceeding in Court if you have a revocable living trust. This can be especially beneficial if you own real property in multiple states which would require that probate be filed in multiple states at your death. Additionally, probate process requires that your personal representative pays court filing fees and newspaper publication fees which can be costly.

3. Managing Assets. Having a trust is a way to have someone else manage assets for you or your beneficiary if you or your beneficiary is unable to manage the assets on their own. This is particularly important if you become incompetent or have beneficiaries who are minors or disabled.

4. Holding Assets. Having a trust allows you to hold the majority of your assets in your trust which can make the administration and distribution of assets a simpler and less costly process.

5. Distributing Assets. A trustee can distribute the assets to your beneficiaries at the trustee’s discretion. This can be important if your beneficiaries are minors or have substance abuse or other problems or simply are not responsible with their finances.

6. Selecting Your Beneficiaries. A trust allows you to designate your beneficiaries. If you do not have a trust or a will, your assets will pass to your next of kin in the manner prescribed by state law unless you designate otherwise. Also people often are not aware that if they are remarried but have children from a previous marriage, in Oregon, those children will receive one-half of the deceased spouse’s separately owned estate and the current spouse will receive the other one-half of the estate.

7. Using both Spouses Exemptions. Having a trust will allow you to maximize your estate tax savings by using both spouses’ exemptions at death. In Oregon the current estate tax exemption is $1 million and the federal estate tax exemption is $5,450,000. With proper planning, you can double the exemption amounts and avoid paying unnecessary estate tax.

8. Privacy. If you have to open a probate, your distributions and assets are public record which anyone can review. Generally, trusts are kept private so no one except the beneficiaries is aware of the distributions. This can be important if your beneficiary is inheriting a large sum of money and you do not want others to be aware of that inheritance.

9. Preserving Disability Benefits. If any of your beneficiaries receive state assistance, you can set up a special needs trust within your revocable living trust which allows your beneficiary to inherit assets without losing any state or federal assistance for which that beneficiary otherwise qualifies.

10. Protecting Assets. Although a revocable living trust does not usually protect the trustor or creator of the trust from creditors, assets held in the trust after the trustor’s death can be protected for your beneficiaries from their creditors or claims by their spouse in the event of divorce.

11. Contingent Beneficiaries. Setting up a trust allows you to not only name beneficiaries to inherit at your death, it also allows you to designate contingent beneficiaries in case your beneficiaries do not survive you. The contingent beneficiaries can be people or charities.