A few other notes on "will+probate" vs RLT:
Probate on multiple locations - you or a spouse/parent has assets under title in more than one county/state. Now you have to go through that probate process in each and every county. As I noted, I haven't personally experienced the probate process, so I don't know how many personal appearances one has to make (probably varies by county/state). But regardless, you've just multiplied the involvement factor overall by 100% for each county that's involved.
And one other item: for larger estates (i.e. exceeding the estate tax exemption threshold), RLTs allow you to specifically reference whatever the (at the time of death) federal estate tax exemption amount is to pass to your heirs, and your spouse to receive everything above that exemption amount. This greatly facilitates the minimization of federal estate taxes, and doesn't require you to constantly update your account titles so certain accounts pass to your spouse vs other heirs when the estate tax exemption amounts change from time to time. (This would be properly set up such that each spouse has roughly the same assets under each of their trusts)
I suspect that if you call up a financial institution and announce that you're the successor trustee of the RLT, you'll get every bit as much respect as the conservator's appointment letter earns. But if you have a good turnover file and you continue to do business over the institution's website, they never need to know (or care) who's in charge.
I was referring more to the process of getting to the point of having the court-appointment in hand to give to the institution, rather than the process of closing/transferring accounts. It could very well take several months for a $1-$2M estate to go through the probate courts before getting to the point of closing/transferring accounts, versus just a week after death with a RLT.
Also, I agree that if you have on-line passwords, you can do a heck of a lot....but if an account has to be probated, the courts could be very particular as to any transaction that happens after death for which you didn't have explicit power to act on.
There are separate legal issues with joint accounts that aren't applicable to RLTs, but that's a whole 'nother thread.
These aren't all the considerations that Nords alludes to, but a few biggies:
From a tax perspective - the IRS officially views placing someone's name as joint owner on an account or property as 'gifting' them 50% of the account value. If it's your spouse, you have the unlimited marital transfer exemption (if they are a US citizen) and there is no problem. If it's not your spouse that you're naming as joint owner, and the value of 50% of the account/asset is more than the annual $13,000 gift tax exclusion, I believe you technically have to file a gift tax return and either pay a gift tax on 50% of the value, or use up part of your estate tax exemption to avoid gift taxes. Does the IRS catch each and every account that's set up as a joint owner and make sure you file the form? No. Do you want to roll the dice by not filing that return and using part of your exemption? It's your call.
From a liability perspective: if the non-spouse who is a joint owner on the account gets divorced or sued, their 'interest' in the account is up for grabs. And if you hurry up and take their name off of the account right before divorce/lawsuit takes place, the courts can accuse you of trying to illegally conceal assets (even though they may have never been their assets to begin with). Not to mention it's the Joint Owner's 'right' to withdraw any amount of money from the account(s) at any time. Hope you REALLY trust that child/sibling that's joint owner!
If you have just one child, and they are getting everything, a TOD may work beautifully and simply - although there's still the aspect of "what if myself, spouse and DD/DS die at the same time?" Sure, it's not a very likely scenario at all...but if it were to happen, that TOD may become a very onerous thing for whoever is left (sibling, parent), because they may first have to probate everything to your child's name, and then probate it all again to however the state handles dying without a will based on your child (if they're of legal age). And if that child is not of legal age, perhaps an additional period of time at the courts. Again, not a very likely scenario at all....but an RLT is a form of "insurance" for the death that is guaranteed to happen to each and every one of us, not a "what if" for a hurricane, fire, or earthquake hitting your home that may never occur.
And if you have more than one heir (multiple children, or perhaps child(ren) and some charities), using a TOD requires you to keep tabs on account values at all times if you're trying to leave certain % to certain heirs, and then having to liquidate/shift around assets to maintain certain account values for even distribution. An RLT neatly and perfectly divides up the whole shebang (for accounts titled under the RLT) by an exact percentage to each heir, so you can spend what you want from whichever account and not worry about one heir getting shafted because you died before transferring something over.
An RLT is certainly not the perfect solution to estate planning...but for many members of this forum (assets > $1MM, several family/charitable heirs), there are legal, tax and estate planning issues for which an RLT is better suited for them compared to the Average Jane and Joe in the US (for whom a simple TOD and/or Joint Owner could suffice).
