Our usual fees for simple wills and durable powers of attorney for a couple are $400.00. For a family with minor children, wills for a couple that include testamentary trust and guardianship provisions and durable powers of attorney routinely cost $700.00. A revocable living trust typically costs $1,000.00. This fee includes durable powers of attorney, deeds transferring any real estate to the trust and "pour-over" wills. We always include Oregon Advance Directives with any will or trust without any extra charge.

If we recommend a will or a trust, you will know before we start to prepare your documents how much the legal fees will be. If your situation is more complicated or involves more legal work than a typical situation, we may charge more. However we would tell you how much it would cost and explain why it is more than what we usually charge before we begin any work on your behalf. You always would know exactly what the fee would be before you authorized us to begin to prepare the documents.

Most living trusts were created to avoid the time and expense of probate. If your estate will not need to go through a full probate, either because all assets are in joint ownership with the right of survivorship or because your estate can be treated as a small estate, you probably do not need a living trust. Living trusts do not necessarily reduce inheritance taxes and they do not always protect your assets from your creditors.

Legal advice to the family member handling the living trust, called the successor trustee, after the death of the person who created the living trust usually costs less than $750.00. By comparison, the costs of probate are usually at least $3,000.00 and can be as much as $10,000.00 or $15,000.00.

The successor trustee for the living trust has immediate access to the trust's assets and can take care of the family without waiting for a court order. The necessary steps to protect the family can be taken right away. Full distributions can be made without a lengthy waiting period. A probate often can take more than a year to complete.

With a revocable living trust you are in control. You reserve the right to amend the trust or terminate it completely at any time up until the time of your death or disability. You can buy and sell property, invest your money and, in general, deal with your assets as you would without the trust. You are the creator of the trust, the first acting trustee and the primary beneficiary. You do not give up any control over your assets by creating a living trust.

Not everyone has to have a will or a trust. In order to know whether you need a will or a trust, you need to understand what would happen after your death if you did not have a will. A will or a trust gives you the opportunity to have a say in what happens to your property and your family after your death. But it may be that your property would go to the people you want to receive it even if you do not have a will.

Unmarried couples or domestic partners need to have wills or a trust because the laws that protect the interest of a spouse do not apply. Specifically, if one domestic partner dies without a will or a trust, the other person does not automatically inherit part of the estate. We have seen situations when the survivor has to sell the couple's home or other assets because they did not have a will or a trust.

If a person does not have a will or a trust, his or her property passes by right of survivorship or by intestate succession. Any property that is owned jointly with the right of survivorship will pass directly to the joint owner whether or not the deceased left a will or a trust. This is a very common form of joint ownership, especially between a husband and wife. Some people choose to use it as a form of estate planning by holding assets with a right of survivorship with their children or a person they have instructed to make a distribution to their intended beneficiaries.

Unfortunately, joint ownership with survivorship, other than for property owned by a couple, can be dangerous because it can expose your assets to the joint owner's present or future financial problems. For example, if you held property in joint ownership with the right of survivorship with one of your children, and that child then had financial problems which resulted in a judgment being entered against him or her, that judgment could attach to real estate that you owned jointly or could be used to garnish money from a bank account held jointly with that child.

In addition, joint ownership of appreciated property can result in loss of a significant income tax benefit to individuals who receive property through an estate or a trust. Known as the "step-up in basis", it means that the beneficiaries do not pay income taxes on the income they receive when they sell highly appreciated assets after one's death.

Assets not in joint ownership with a right of survivorship would go automatically to the heirs through the laws known as "intestate succession." Under these rules, if you have no children or if all of your children are also children of your present spouse, your property would all go to your spouse. If you have children who are not also children of your present spouse, one-half of your estate goes to them and one-half to your spouse.

If your spouse died before you, your estate would go to your children. If you left no surviving children, it would go to your parents or their surviving lineal descendants. If your parents died before you leaving no surviving lineal descendants, it would go to surviving lineal descendants of your grandparents and so on.

If these arrangements result in your property going to your intended beneficiaries, a will or a trust is not necessary. You might still want to have a living trust to let your loved ones avoid the time and expense of a probate. Nonetheless, if your assets would go where you want them to go under the intestate succession rules described above, it is not necessary for you to have a will or a trust to direct your assets to your desired beneficiaries.

If you have minor children and you and the other parent died and neither one of you had designated a guardian in a will, your relatives might have to petition the Probate Court for an order appointing a guardian for your minor children.

If you had assets that were going to a minor child, but did not have either a will containing a trust or a revocable living trust, a conservator would have to be appointed by the court. He or she would be paid from that child's share of the estate. The inheritance would be paid to the child after his or her eighteenth birthday without any further controls or limitations on its use.

A trust for minor children, either in a will or a revocable living trust, usually includes limitations on when the inheritance is paid to your children and may include conditions limiting its use, such as requiring that it be spent for college or that it only be released for the purchase of a home.

If the value of your assets are less than the limits for what is known as a "small estate" procedure, specifically, real estate holdings with a value of $90,000.00 or other assets with a value of $50,000.00, you do not need to have a living trust to avoid the high costs of probate. Your estate will qualify for small estate administration. Your beneficiaries will avoid the costs of a regular or "full blown" probate if the assets in your estate are under the limits listed above for a small estate procedure.

A small estate proceeding involves much less time and expense than a regular probate proceeding. It usually costs less than $750.00 in legal fees and usually only takes five months to complete. In a regular probate, the legal fees are usually at least $3,000.00 and can be as high as $10,000.00 or $15,000.00 and the case can easily last more than a year. If your estate would have more assets than would qualify for small estate handling, your family would have to go through a full blown probate proceeding. In the course of probate proceedings, certain details of your private life are made part of the public record. Your executor or executrix (called a personal representative under Oregon law) has to be approved by the court. He or she must file documents giving an inventory of your estate and listing who is getting an inheritance and how much. Other private matters such as to whom you owed money and how much you owed at the time of your death also become part of the public record in the course of a probate case.

A revocable living trust helps a family avoid the time and expense of probate but it does not help avoid unnecessary taxes. Though this area of law has gone through a lot of changes, if you have a large estate, you should speak with an attorney to make sure you know what the risks are. Failure to inform yourself about these issues could result in substantial tax liabilities for your family to pay after your death. If your combined estate exceeds $1,000,000.00 you may need to take steps to avoid the possible imposition of inheritance taxes which would reduce the amount received by your intended beneficiaries. Simple estate planning techniques can eliminate the danger of these taxes. They can be as high as 35% of the taxable estate. We have attorneys with expertise in planning for taxable estates who can make sure that your family is protected.

Since these kinds of trusts are revocable, the assets in them are treated, other than for probate purposes, as though they still belong to you. As a result, your creditors can reach them as well. You would have to create a non-revocable trust and give up control forever of its assets in order to protect them from your creditors. Even then, creditors could reach the assets in the irrevocable trust for up to four years after you transferred them if you were insolvent at the time the trust was set up.

We want to help you through the probate process and use our legal knowledge, experience, and emphasis on communication with our clients to make the way as smooth as possible. Often callers find out with the first phone call that no probate is necessary or that the deceased's estate qualifies for treatment under the small estate procedures. As we do in any of the areas of law that we practice, we want to make a difficult situation as bearable as possible. We do this by answering all of your questions and making sure you understand how things work so that you can make the decisions that are best for your family.

Our usual fee for a typical estate is $2,500.00 to $3,500.00. The exact fee is determined by an hourly rate of $250.00 for attorney time and $100.00 per hour for paralegal staff time. As discussed above, we keep track of our time on one-tenth of an hour minimum charges instead of the two-tenths or one-quarter of an hour minimum charges used by many other firms that do probate work.

Legal fees and costs in probate cases must be approved by the Probate Court before payment. As a result of this rule, no retainer is required before we begin to work on a probate case. However, the family will have to pay the fees and costs when they are approved by the court when the case is completed unless the estate has assets that will result in funds from which legal fees can be paid. Most estates have sufficient liquid assets from which the fees and costs will be paid.

Since the fee is based on an hourly rate, large cases which involve more work will cost more. Cases involving more than one piece of real estate, a business, multiple investments, or a large family will be more expensive. If your assets are less than the limitations for the small estate status, that is, real estate holdings with a value of $90,000.00 or more and other assets worth more than $50,000.00 in total value, your family probably will not have to go through a full probate and will save hundreds of dollars in legal fees. Our usual legal fees for a typical small estate affidavit are $750.00 or less.

Probate procedure includes a 120 day waiting period for creditors to file claims against the estate. Since the waiting period cannot start until the personal representative has been appointed and the estate admitted to probate, most cases take a minimum of six months. Complicated estates with assets that must be sold or disputed claims that must be litigated can take much longer.