How Readable/Understandable are your Trust Documents?

[Midpack]

I’ve closely read a lot of ours recently, as an update is imminent, and not only are the documents unnecessarily long (compared to my parents and my sisters docs) the wording of much of it is VERY hard to understand. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed and I know attorneys seem to relish in legalese, but I doubt even an intelligent Successor Trustee could figure out what are directions are. I hate to be a cynic, but I seriously wonder if it’s written that way to “encourage” a Successor Trustee to hire the attorney that authored it to navigate through it all. I’m thinking about starting over with another estate lawyer but the one we used gets great ratings and is conversational in person, and I have no way of knowing before paying for new trust docs.

 

[RetiredHappy]

Ours is not very readable, but enough to understand.

 

[GrayHare]

Attorneys prefer legelese because it has known meanings within the legal system. The trouble is that can make it difficult for others to know what a document says.

 

[dak2018]

My first trust version (prepared by an old-school attorney) was extremely lengthy and seemingly unnecessarily complex. After many years we had the trust redone by another attorney and the work product there was much more understandable and seems to meet our requirements. I questioned the difference in length and the attorney indicated that laws and best practices change. The old attorney was doing as he was taught, but that for uncomplicated situations such as ours that the additional verbiage is simply not needed.

 

[Sunset]

I think it's a waste to start over with another lawyer to re-write the trust, as the Successor Trustee may still hire a lawyer to interpret the trust.
Plus the new one may be as complex or more complex than the existing one.

Having the Successor Trustee hire a lawyer doesn't mean they hand over the reins and let the lawyer run the trust for years, it could be as simple as asking , what allowed/can do with the trust.

Then go off and do it for the remaining years.

 

[Midpack]

^^ Fortunately our trust will most likely be settled in a matter of months, other than maybe final tax return. Our estate and assets are relatively simple and we don't have kids, or family members who we expect to contest anything (fingers crossed).

 

[OldShooter]

WADR, this thread suffers from a common disease here: Is the OP talking about a rev trust aka living trust or about an irrev trust which typically is created on the death of the grantor? A rev trust is relatively easy to change and can be fairly simple. An irrev trust may be neither.

FWIW, we just signed off on an irrev trust that is designed to convert our lake home to long-term family ownership. It is kind of a bear of a document, IIRC 84 pages, but necessarily so because it creates a shared ownership with various trustees and successor trustees, plus provides some guidance on management of the property long term. This is not a "trust" whose complexity can be usefully compared to the typical rev trust.

 

[SecondCor521]

I’ve closely read a lot of ours recently, as an update is imminent, and not only are the documents unnecessarily long (compared to my parents and my sisters docs) the wording of much of it is VERY hard to understand. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed and I know attorneys seem to relish in legalese, but I doubt even an intelligent Successor Trustee could figure out what are directions are. I hate to be a cynic, but I seriously wonder if it’s written that way to “encourage” a Successor Trustee to hire the attorney that authored it to navigate through it all. I’m thinking about starting over with another estate lawyer but the one we used gets great ratings and is conversational in person, and I have no way of knowing before paying for new trust docs.

I am cynical towards attorneys for similar reasons.

My parents established two trusts. The main trust document which established an irrevocable credit shelter trust is 20 pages long. The other trust document which established an ILIT is 9 pages long and has three additional pages of addendums. Both are generally readable. The first one has some complicated parts but thankfully those portions are mostly irrelevant / not applicable.

I personally would not sign any legal document, especially estate planning documents, without reading it very carefully and fully understanding it myself. If the attorney won't write it in such a way that I can understand it, then I'd find a new attorney even if it meant some inefficiency in terms of legal fees.

I commend you on updating your documents. My Mom died in 2016 and one of the trust documents was 17 years old at the time. Because of changes in the law and my parents' situation, we had to pay $16K in legal fees to modify the trust to do what was appropriate and good. I try to at least review mine every five years or so.

 

[Franklin]

right in the middle of it as I text. Moved to a new state and changed my executor and benefactors and estate has grown. My lead son is now in rehab and I saw a real need to resolve many possible problems. My oldest is an alcoholic ( was in charge of my estate) but the youngest has his head on straight and will take the lead. No, I have difficulty understanding all the legal terms but I do trust the attorney since that is her sole responsibility.So, I'm in the process of restating all the doc's to accompany all the changes.

 

[Midpack]

WADR, this thread suffers from a common disease here: Is the OP talking about a rev trust aka living trust or about an irrev trust which typically is created on the death of the grantor? A rev trust is relatively easy to change and can be fairly simple. An irrev trust may be neither.

Sorry. We have a revocable trust, along with wills, POAs, Living Wills, etc.

 

[Midpack]

I personally would not sign any legal document, especially estate planning documents, without reading it very carefully and fully understanding it myself. If the attorney won't write it in such a way that I can understand it, then I'd find a new attorney even if it meant some inefficiency in terms of legal fees.

I generally agree, and I have read a good bit of it, but not all. It doesn’t help that much of it a) some of it is so confusing I’m not sure I’m reading it right, b) some sections cover contingencies that will never apply to us, and c) it’s about 200 pages.

If I could be sure another attorney would write a more concise, understandable trust I’d go for it. I thought I’d chosen such an attorney the first time. I seriously doubt any estate attorney writes trusts from scratch for every client. I believe it starts as a universal set of documents that the attorney can easily plug in client specifics, most of it is “boilerplate” (see b) above).

 

[rk911]

The 'meat' of our trust is readable but we need to make changes to our successor trustee list as well as a few other changes. But the language is pretty clear. The "legal" portions, however, are not. I suspect most revocable trust are the same.

 

[jebmke]

Our package included the wills and trusts; attorney also included a flow chart that explained how the various docments worked together and a two-page summary of the trust.

 

[Midpack]

Our package included the wills and trusts; attorney also included a flow chart that explained how the various docments worked together and a two-page summary of the trust.

+1. We have a meeting coming up with our estate attorney and I am going to ask if he has some sort of summary. In the meantime I found this and checked it out at our local library. I plan to buy a copy for my reference, and make our successor Trustees aware of it. Doesn’t replace legal advice, but looks like a good guide and reference.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

My folk's is fairly understandable but I do need to look up some of the terms when reviewing it. Unfortunately, many words have specific legal meanings and the common word is often not correct for the situation. I know I will likely have some questions and need some help as trustee/executor. Fortunately, they used an established local estate planning firm so there will be help from the folks that wrote it - they include one visit free so hopefully I'll have all my questions ready to go. I suspect my biggest challenge will be establishing the "follow-on" (not legalese) trusts and moving the assets into them for the benefit of their heirs.

The signing took a couple hours as the attorney explained the sections and what they did but the test will be when the rubber hits the road. Fortunately, I expect little drama and most assets are already in the trust (except tax-advantaged that have named beneficiaries) and a spill over will to cover anything else.

 

[More Cowbell]

+1. We have a meeting coming up with our estate attorney and I am going to ask if he has some sort of summary. In the meantime I found this and checked it out at our local library. I plan to buy a copy for my reference, and make our successor Trustees aware of it. Doesn’t replace legal advice, but looks like a good guide and reference.

You might also look for The Executor’s Guide: Settling a Loved One’s Estate or Trust by Mary Randolph, also published by Nolo Press. Unless the estate is in Louisiana, not sure why not, but that’s what the book description states.

Nolo Press offers a discounted PDF-only ebook Executor’s Bundle exclusively on their website which also includes Get It Together: Organize Your Records So Your Family Won’t Have To by Melanie Cullen. I certainly wish my DM organized her papers or at least threw out the unimportant papers!

 

[donheff]

I dumped my docs into an AI (more than a year ago) and had it generate a nice easy to understand guide for the kids. The output is a good guide. This thread reminded me about it. AIs have improved by an order of magnitude in that short time so I will redo it.

 

[SecondCor521]

You might also look for The Executor’s Guide: Settling a Loved One’s Estate or Trust by Mary Randolph, also published by Nolo Press. Unless the estate is in Louisiana, not sure why not, but that’s what the book description states.

Louisiana law is quite different from the rest of the US states. It has something to do with the early history of the state and it's affiliation with France. There's an estate planning attorney who does good YouTube videos who is based out of Louisiana named Paul Rabalais. He does YT live streams and will answer chat questions. Paul Rabalais | Estate Planning Attorney

In general I like the Nolo press books for estate planning stuff.

 

[Midpack]

I dumped my docs into an AI (more than a year ago) and had it generate a nice easy to understand guide for the kids. The output is a good guide. This thread reminded me about it. AIs have improved by an order of magnitude in that short time so I will redo it.

That's a fascinating idea. I may try that, thanks. I'll be surprised if CoPilot or ChatGPT isn't as confused as I am when it tries to summarize.

 

[JBTX]

Our most recent restatement of RLT - which also creates trusts for our kids, is very readable and easy to understand and not particularly long. We selected this attorney because post secure act we needed to redo the kids trusts to be accumulation trusts given most of our stuff is in IRAs/Roths. The attorney is Harvard educated and recommended by a prominent estate planning attorney who posts on Bogleheads.

Our prior attorney who I found decades ago based upon a friend recommendation was a good guy - a tax attorney and estate planner. Also tried his hand at financial planning but gave that up after the financial crash. My coworker had heard of him based on his presentation at a local country club. The trust he created was probably 60 pages with all kinds of stuff that seemed completely inapplicable and it wasn’t very readable. Either the wills or the trust started out with something like “Know ye all men” as if 17th century language would impress the court. He said it was boilerplate stuff they include in such trusts. When we decided to restate, for a second time we changed attorneys because he didn’t have experience with accumulation trusts - and was honest enough to say we may want someone with more experience in such matters.

Not being a lawyer I figured the fancier attorney would have fancier language but it was actually the opposite. I think sometimes the better attorneys have more confidence to use simple language.

 

[Slim11]

When I did mine , I read it over and took out things I didnt like. My attorney was old school and after it was done said, I didn't like it and kept reworking it untill he was satisfied it covered the major things. The minor stuff will be handled outside the Trust and they will get an outline of my wishes. For me the ability to have it be more fluid was better to make sure my minor child was taken care of. If you cant understand the document, you may include a way to interpret what you want and pass it to the trustee. But you also have to make sure that it doesn't clash with whats 8n the Trust.

 

[DEC-1982]

In the meantime I found this and checked it out at our local library. I plan to buy a copy for my reference, and make our successor Trustees aware of it. Doesn’t replace legal advice, but looks like a good guide and reference.

Thank you

 

[Midpack]

Had our meeting with our estate attorney yesterday. I've learned a lot since my OP, largely in reading the book I linked above. Our updated plan will be better, and I will rely more on our Letter of Instruction since there are matters outside the Trust. However, it's crucial our Letter of Instruction jives with the Trust itself as Slim11 noted above.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I had this all done.

I wouldn't pay $5,000 for something that I could understand.

 

[kilgore]

We go through an annual review with our law firm and discuss with our beneficiaries. We are comfortable. Only concern is if younger family move to another country.