I Want a Revocable Living Trust… Do I Need a Will?

“Well, if you have a Revocable Living Trust, don’t you also need a Will?” the other attorney asked.

“Yeah, you need a Will,” I responded.

“Ah ha!” the other attorney exclaimed as if he has just made some profound and overriding point to justify his position that using a revocable living trust was somehow no more beneficial than having a Last Will and Testament and that attorneys were somehow just trying to get paid to draft an additional document.

The short explanation is that the Will that goes along with a Revocable Living Trust is called a “Pour-Over Will” which has some important but bare-bones work to do as a backup mechanism to the trust.

While the Revocable Living Trust handles a lot when it comes to estate planning, it doesn’t cover absolutely everything. The Pour-Over Will is an important backup document to help round out your estate planning system.

For more information, check out my free audiobook Estate Planning Basics available here: https://youtu.be/-D_zLcS3n_Q

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