Parents want and need a living trust, but can't afford the fee local lawyer wants to do one

The money spent on an estate planning attorney now will be worth the savings it will create in the future. If the attorney you sought out quoted a price that was too high then maybe try other attorneys in the area. There has to be someone that can give you a reasonable price.

I agree with Attorney Staub. Please feel free to review my legal guide on why it is important to use a lawyer for estate planning. You can find it, here: http://www.attorneyqna.com/legal-guides/ugc/do-i-need-an-attorney-to-set-up-an-estate-plan and here is another guide which talks about lower cost estate planning: http://www.attorneyqna.com/legal-guides/ugc/how-and-when-to-take-advantage-of-free-or-low-cost-estate-planning-tools As Attorney Staub indicated, it is generally much more expensive to correct estate plans that are not set up properly. Why run the risk? People do not blink at selling their homes through a realtor, even though that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Yet, they are willing to risk their entire estate in order to save a few hundred dollars. It does not make sense. Your family will thank you that you care enough about them to take care of this properly. James Frederick

Both attorney offer sound advice. Do not even entertain for one minute this online nonsense. With the amount of money involved you need a well trained attorney to do this correctly. Court rooms are filed with cases of do it yourself wills and trusts. Layman have no idea of the legal significance of the terms in a trust and may alter them, delete them or make bad choices concerning them. This is just utter nonsense and will result in more costs down the road then if an estates attorney was used originally. Do not know how much clearer this can be. Hope this helps. Please remember to designate a best answer to your question. Mr. Fromm is licensed to practice law throughout the state of PA with offices in Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties. He is authorized to handle IRS matters throughout the United States. His phone number is 215-735-2336 or his email address is [email protected] , his website for more tax, estate and business articles is www.sjfpc.com. and his blog is

I, and the other lawyers in my firm do quite a bit of probate work. More than half of our billable hours are the result of someone doing their own legal work over the internet. In my experience the fee for a properly written living trust is less than 10% of the fee for a messy probate. My tip: Pay the fees for your parents to put the home into trust. Why you? Because you are the one who will benefit. By putting your parent's home into a living trust YOU will be saving money in the long run. YOU will be the one paying for probate, etc. after they pass away if it is not done properly. YOU should be willing to put up the attorney's fee for your parents because YOU will be the one who saves money, time, and heartache later. Good luck.