What’s The Difference Between A Will And A Trust in California?

[Music] Hi it is Keith Davidson from Albertson and Davidson in this video I want to talk to you about the differences between wills and trusts a lot of times people will think that wills and trusts are the same thing they're the same type of documents and they really aren't wills and trusts are very different and so let's start with a discussion of wills and then we'll talk about trusts and you can see the differences between the two documents Will's are testamentary documents and what that means is they only come into effect they only actually are created upon somebody's death now you go ahead and create the will and write it down and sign it prior to death but it doesn't operate until after death for Wills there's a lot of what we call formalities that you have to follow so to have a valid will you have to have it in writing it has to be signed by the person who's creating the will and a typewritten will has to be witnessed by two witnesses or it has to be in the testator's own handwriting that's what we call a holographic will but if you don't meet those formalities when you create a will then the will simply isn't going to be valid and so that's something that is unique to wills you're not going to have that with trusts and then after somebody passes away a will cannot operate over their assets until you take that wheel to court and you have the court admit the will to probate that's where the court decides that whether the will is valid or not and until the will is admitted to probate nothing can happen with that will you can't administer it you can't manage the decedent's assets it has to go through this court process in order to operate and then the will ultimately will dictate how the assets pass out out of probate and to the beneficiaries who are intended to receive them and that's generally how it will works a trust is very different because most people create what we call a living trust in legal terms we would call that an inter vivos trust meaning that it's created during your lifetime and it actually operates during your lifetime so the trustee of your living trust can manage your assets can make management decisions over those assets and it operates even if you lose capacity and that's different from a will because the will will never help you if you lose capacity but a trust will and then after you pass the trustee can administer that trust without having to go to court trusts don't require any court oversight in order to be administered and in order to create a trust all you have to do is have something in writing in signed you don't technically even need to have it notarized although most trusts are notarized and they probably should be but you that's not a legal requirement that they be notarized and trusts tend to be a lot more flexible because you can leave your assets to your children or your beneficiaries and you can have all sorts of flexibility in how you leave your assets to them so you can leave something in a child's trust that holds their assets until a certain age or you can leave something to your grandchild and also hold that until they reach a certain age there's all sorts of flexibility that you can build into your trust that is a much harder to do under a will because the will has to go to court and through the probate process in order to be administered so that is some differences between a will and a trust and I think you'll see that there are very different documents [Music] [Applause] you.