To get a living trust, you have three practical routes: hire an estate planning attorney, use an online trust platform, or draft one yourself from a template kit. Attorney-drafted trusts generally run $1,500 to $5,000 or more depending on complexity, online services cost a few hundred dollars to around $1,000, and DIY kits come in under $100. The right choice depends on how complicated your finances are, how comfortable you are with legal paperwork, and how much personalized guidance you want.
Know Which Kind of Trust You Actually Need
When people say “living trust,” they almost always mean a revocable living trust. You create it during your lifetime, fund it with your assets, and can change or cancel it whenever you want. You stay in control the entire time. Most people setting up a trust are setting up this kind.
An irrevocable trust is a different animal. Once you move assets in, you generally give up the right to take them back or change the terms without court approval or agreement from all beneficiaries. The tradeoff is real: irrevocable trusts can remove assets from your taxable estate and may shield them from certain creditors, but you lose direct control. If your estate is large enough to face federal estate tax, or you have specific asset protection or Medicaid planning concerns, that’s an attorney conversation. Everything below assumes you’re setting up a revocable trust.
Route 1: Hiring an Estate Planning Attorney
Working with an attorney gets you a trust tailored to your specific family and financial situation. An experienced estate planner will review your assets, ask about your goals, draft a customized trust document, and typically prepare companion documents like a pour-over will, financial power of attorney, and healthcare directive as part of a complete estate plan. A trust by itself doesn’t cover everything, so those companion pieces matter.
Flat fees for a standard revocable living trust generally range from $1,500 to $4,000 for straightforward situations. Complex estates with business interests, blended families, or tax planning needs can push the cost above $5,000. Some attorneys charge hourly instead, with rates typically between $150 and $500 depending on location and experience. Ask about scope before you commit. A good engagement letter spells out exactly which documents are included.
To find someone qualified, start with your state bar association’s lawyer referral service. Referrals from friends who have recently done their own estate planning are often more useful than directory searches, because you get honest feedback about communication and responsiveness. During the initial consultation, pay attention to whether the attorney asks questions about your goals or just recites a menu of documents. The former is a better sign.
Attorney drafting is worth the money if you have rental properties in more than one state, children from a previous marriage, a special-needs dependent, a closely held business, or an estate large enough to raise tax questions.
Route 2: Using an Online Trust Platform
Online services such as Trust & Will and LegalZoom walk you through a questionnaire about your assets, beneficiaries, and distribution wishes, then generate trust documents based on your answers. Prices typically range from around $200 for a basic individual trust to $600 or more for couples, with some services charging annual fees for ongoing access and updates.
The convenience is real, and so are the limits. These platforms generate documents from templates. They don’t flag unusual situations, ask follow-up questions about your family dynamics, or catch the subtle issues an experienced attorney would spot. If your estate is relatively simple and your wishes are straightforward, an online platform can work well. If any of the complications listed above apply to you, the savings aren’t worth the risk of an incomplete or poorly structured trust.
Route 3: Creating a Trust on Your Own
DIY trust kits and fill-in-the-blank forms are available from legal publishers, some public libraries, and legal form websites, usually for under $100. This is the cheapest option upfront. It is not always the cheapest option in the end.
A trust document requires precision. A misidentified asset, a vaguely worded distribution clause, or a failure to follow your state’s execution requirements can make the trust unenforceable. When that happens, your estate ends up in probate anyway, and your heirs spend more cleaning up the mess than you saved by skipping the attorney. People with very modest estates and simple wishes can make this work, but the margin for error is thin.
What to Gather Before You Start
Whichever route you take, having this information ready will make the drafting process go much faster:
- Your full legal name and current address, plus the same for your spouse if you’re creating a joint trust.
- The names of your initial trustee (usually you) and your successor trustees. The successor manages and distributes your assets when you can’t serve anymore, so pick someone you trust with both responsibility and judgment.
- Full names, addresses, and specific instructions for each beneficiary, whether a person or an organization. Vague instructions create disputes.
- An asset inventory: real estate addresses, bank and investment account details, vehicle information, life insurance policies, and descriptions of valuable personal property.
- Any special instructions, such as charitable gifts, conditions on distributions like reaching a certain age, or provisions for a family member who needs a special-needs trust.
Signing and Making It Official
After drafting, the trust document must be signed by the grantor and usually by the initial trustee. If you’re serving as your own trustee, you sign in both capacities. Notarization is highly recommended and often practically required. Many banks and county recording offices will not process asset transfers based on an unnotarized trust. Notary fees are modest, generally a few dollars up to around $15 per signature depending on where you live.
Some states also require witnesses. Your attorney or online platform should specify your state’s requirements. If you’re going the DIY route, verify this yourself before signing.
Funding the Trust
Creating the trust document is only half the job. The trust does nothing until you transfer assets into it. This process, called funding, means changing the legal ownership of your assets from your individual name to the name of the trust. An unfunded trust is just a piece of paper, and your estate goes through probate exactly as if the trust didn’t exist.
Funding typically involves:
- Real estate: recording a new deed that transfers the property from your name to the trust, filed with your county recorder’s office, usually with a small recording fee.
- Bank and investment accounts: contacting each financial institution to retitle the account in the name of the trust, or opening new accounts in the trust’s name and moving funds over.
- Vehicles: some people transfer vehicle titles to their trust, though this varies by state, and insurance implications should be checked first.
- Personal property: valuable items without formal titles, such as art, jewelry, and collectibles, can be transferred through a written assignment document.
A pour-over will acts as a safety net for anything you forget. It directs that any assets still in your individual name at death should be transferred into your trust. The catch is that those assets still have to pass through probate first, which is exactly what the trust was supposed to avoid. Treat the pour-over will as a backup, not a substitute for proper funding.
Retirement Accounts Are Handled Differently
IRAs, 401(k)s, and similar retirement accounts cannot be transferred into a living trust during your lifetime. Federal law requires these accounts to be individually owned and titled in the account holder’s name.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts Retitling them to a trust would be treated as a full distribution, triggering immediate income taxes on the entire balance.
If you want retirement assets managed by your trust after your death, the tool is the beneficiary designation form, not a deed or account retitling. You name the trust as the beneficiary on the form provided by the account custodian. That form overrides your will and your trust document when it comes to who receives the account, so keeping it updated is critical. Naming a trust as the beneficiary of a retirement account can affect the timeline for required distributions to your heirs, particularly under rules established by the SECURE Act, and is one area where an attorney or tax advisor earns their fee.
What a Revocable Trust Will Not Do for You
A revocable trust does not protect your assets from creditors or lawsuits. Because you retain full control and can revoke the trust at any time, the law treats those assets as still belonging to you. A creditor who wins a judgment against you can reach them just as easily as if they were in your personal bank account.
A revocable trust also does not help with Medicaid eligibility. Federal law treats the assets in a revocable trust as resources available to the individual for Medicaid purposes.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1396p – Liens, Adjustments, and Recoveries, and Transfers of Assets Medicaid also imposes a lookback period on asset transfers, so timing matters. If long-term care planning is your goal, talk to an elder law attorney about an irrevocable trust well before you need care.
A revocable trust does not reduce federal estate tax either. Assets in the trust are still counted as part of your taxable estate. For 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is $15,000,000 per individual, and married couples can effectively double that through portability of the unused spousal exemption.3Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax Estates above the exemption face a top tax rate of 40%.4GovInfo. 26 USC 2010 – Unified Credit Against Estate Tax Most people’s estates fall well below this threshold. If yours doesn’t, an irrevocable trust or other advanced planning strategy is worth exploring with a tax attorney.
One thing to relax about: during your lifetime, a revocable living trust has no impact on your income taxes. The IRS treats it as a grantor trust, meaning it’s invisible for tax purposes. You don’t file a separate return, and all income earned by trust assets stays on your personal Form 1040.5Internal Revenue Service. Abusive Trust Tax Evasion Schemes – Questions and Answers Your Social Security number serves as the trust’s tax ID while you’re alive.
Changing or Revoking the Trust Later
You can change a revocable trust whenever your circumstances change. Divorce, another child, new property, a change of heart about a beneficiary. Any of it. For minor changes, a trust amendment document added to the original is usually sufficient. For major overhauls, some attorneys recommend revoking the old trust entirely and creating a new one.
To fully revoke a trust, you generally need to execute a formal revocation document and transfer all assets back out of the trust into your individual name. Some states require the revocation to be filed with a local court. The process is essentially the reverse of creating and funding the trust in the first place. Your right to amend or revoke lasts as long as you’re alive and mentally competent; after your death, the trust becomes irrevocable by its own terms.