Customer Reviews

Make Your Own Living Trust (Book & CD-ROM)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book was a god-send! I was skeptical at first because I have no legal backround and I thought that making my own living trust would be complicated at best, impossible at worst. But following a recommendation of a friend I decided to give do-it-yourself law a shot. Boy am I happy I did! I saved a fortune in legal fees and was able to get the job done just as well as if I'd had a lawyer coaching me every step of the way.
Make Your Own Living Trust was easy to use and very accessible. It even has all of the forms you'll need on an enclosed CD-ROM. Thanks to this book I was able to transfer assets such as stocks, real estate and jewelry to my trust, appoint someone to manage the property that I'm leaving my children, and keep control over it while I live. So don't be afraid to do it yourself, you'll save money and get your trust done the way you want it!

I am an attorney (shyreslaw.com) and I highly recommend this book for those who could use a simple trust and want to avoid probate. Even if you decide to hire an attorney, this book is invaluable because it offers great insight into trusts and avoiding the probate system.

Attorney Denis Clifford wrote this great do-it-yourself book which provides everyone a way to create their own simple living trust. A CD-ROM is also provided so you can easily input your information and print it out.

For a more complete estate plan, the book introduces the importance of pourover wills in case the trust fails to encompass all the property. You may want to peruse Mr. Clifford's Simple Will Book as well (another recommended buy).

The book explained a lot of things well, but almost nobody is going to make their own living trust with this book. Maybe single people with modest estates and no children.

The book has many warnings: "If you want to do blah, blah, blah, see a lawyer. Nolo's living trust program does not handle this situation."

I would give it 3 or 4 stars, except Nolo Press's "Plan Your Estate" is much more thorough. Better to get that.

I was pleased to see this book has a Mac/Windows CD in a jacket on the inside back cover. Your advertising and reviews did not seem to mention that.

As usual, this book was what I expect from Nolo: the best. Very informative, detailed, and useful.

Even if you plan to hire an attorney to prepare your living trust, this book will help you know what to ask and what to expect.

A generally easy to follow and excellent review of the material. However, a shortcoming is the lack of clearly definitive language for determining how to name mutual fund money markey accounts and life insurance policies in order to include in the Trust. For example, do you name yourself as initial trustee or the successor trustee as trustee of children's trusts as beneficiary on life policies? Do you make Trust owner and/or beneficiary of money market mutual funds. One additional crticism is that forms are not set up as "forms" per se. You must eliminate the "fill-in" language such as Name? for each blank.

In order to help my parents with their trust, I had checked out about a dozen books on the subject from the library. I found Denis Clifford's to be the easiest to follow and easiest to read on a fairly complex subject. I found the book (and his "Plan Your Estate" book) so informative I bought a set for myself.

This book offers lots of "real life" examples of different types of financial scenarios and the best options for setting up a trust that will protect the assets from excessive legal fees and/or estate taxes. It covers almost everything you need to know to either write your own trust or carefully check the details of your trust if prepared by a lawyer.

The CD included provides you with the language you need to write your own by filling in the blanks, as well as the step-by-step procedure to cover all the bases to be certain the trust meets all the legal & tax requirements for trusts.

This book is also apparently updated each year, as the tax and estate laws are frequently being revised. I highly recommend this book, and also highly recommend as a companion book that covers other aspects of financial planning, wills, etc., Dennis Clifford's Plan Your Estate.

I was so impressed I also bought copies of both books for my parents and my sister so we could all get our finances in order.

"Make Your Own Living Trust" was so easy to follow I recommend it to all the baby boomers. The disc attached to the back made it easy to print the required forms.

Nolo Press continues the tradition of providing step by step guidance through complex legal processes. Step by step demystification of the process.


Even if you are going to use an attorney this is a good read and you will save many times the cost of the book in having answered your own questions and by receiving a good introduction to the subject.

Highly recommended

Wills must go through the long and winding road of the probate process, which can take a year or more and drain at least five percent of the value of your estate in the form of legal fees. That's $15,000 on a $300,000 estate! This book discusses something called a Living Trust, which does the same thing as a will in terms of delivering your assets to your beneficiaries, but does it without probate, without delays, and without legal fees. The book explains what can and what should not be handled by a Living Trust, and also explains other probate avoidance methods. If you want to prepare a Living Trust or a basic will or any of dozen or so legal documents, the book includes both tear-out forms and also a CD with all of the documents in MS Word format. A great resource to help you gather and organize all of the data that summarizes your financial life. If you've ever been the executor of a parent's estate you'll wish they had read this book.