[quote=sdduuuude]Holding property in trust offers little benefit to me. The benefit is to my heirs should I die or be deemed incompetent.

Basically, a trust lays the framework to transfer assets from me to my heirs without going through the government at all.

Without it, the assets go through a process called probate, which is basically a scam for a govt employee to charge my wife and/or kids $10K to $100K to shuffle papers around for two years before they actually get the stuff that I will to them.

With a trust, probate is avoided. Some inheiritance tax is avoided, but not all. The real benefit is to avoid probate.

If I recall, the right kind of trust also avoids a reset of taxable value when a house is transferred to the kids.[/quote]

Excellent post sdduuude. I completely agree. I think anyone in California would be silly not to have a trust. As you mentioned, the benefit isn’t for us but our heirs.

You got a pretty good price for all of that. My lawyer charges $1,500 for those things.