Living Trust

Oklahoma City Living Trust Attorney

A living trust (also called an inter vivos trust, a revocable trust, or a Loving trust©) is a powerful estate planning document. It allows you to fully control your assets during your lifetime and fully provide for how you want those assets to be distributed after your death.

At Postic & Bates, our estate planning lawyers create all types of living trusts for people in Oklahoma. We also create living wills and powers of attorney.

One advantage of a living trust is that by incorporating the same language you use in your will, you can avoid the need for your heirs to go through the probate process. Probate in Oklahoma will take four months to a year and even a small estate will cost between $3,000 and $5,000. With a trust, if someone dies today their successor trustee can be in power tomorrow. All the successor trustee needs is proof of the trust maker's death. The assets of the estate can usually be distributed in 30 to 60 days.

Living trusts also allow families to do estate planning in a private fashion. Probate records are public records; anyone with an Internet connection can go to a Web site for a county and see what you owned, as well as the names and the addresses of the beneficiaries and other information you might expect to remain private. With a living trust you have a private document.

Trusts are usually set up as a revocable document, so you can change it at any time if there are births or deaths, marriages or divorces, or assets bought and sold. It's good idea to review your trust once a year. You can also set up special purpose trusts, such as a special needs trust to care for a disabled child or elderly parent.

Your trust can contain a provision that a share going to a beneficiary be held and administered by the successor trustee. This is sometimes called a spendthrift provision, and it can be used to protect a child's inheritance from creditors, predators, and from themselves.

At Postic & Bates, our lawyers can usually send you a draft of the trust and other estate planning documents that you need within a week. Along with your trust, we'll give you a separate document explaining the terms used. This will give you a chance to review the documents and get comfortable with them before you come in to sign them. Our lawyers are always available to answer any questions you have.

For more information about trusts, request our free Estate Planning Guide.

Free Consultation: Contact Oklahoma City living trust attorney Martin Postic Jr. to arrange a free consultation.