Quick answer: A revocable living trust (RLT) is a trust you create during your lifetime, retain full control over, and can amend or revoke at any time.
Key Points
You sign a trust document naming yourself as the initial trustee and beneficiary.
Because you control the trust during life, the IRS treats it as a grantor trust for income tax purposes — there is no separate tax return and no asset protection.
Signing the trust and never funding it.
Naming the trust as beneficiary of a retirement account without thinking through the SECURE Act 10-year rule and accelerated income tax.
Using a generic out-of-state template that ignores how New York, New Jersey, or Ohio actually treats trustee powers, spousal rights, and creditor claims.
New York: probate through Surrogate's Court is slow and public; an RLT is one of the few ways to keep an estate out of the court file and avoid SCPA 1404 examinations.
New Jersey: the surrogate process is fast, so RLTs in NJ are used primarily for privacy, incapacity, out-of-state property, and second-marriage planning rather than probate avoidance.
Ohio: probate is moderate but real; RLTs combined with Transfer-on-Death affidavits for real estate are a clean way to bypass it entirely.
We draft, sign, and — critically — fund the trust.
Frequently Asked
No. Because you can revoke it, the assets are still treated as yours and remain reachable by your creditors. Creditor protection requires irrevocable structures, and even then it is fact-specific — transfers made once a claim exists or is foreseeable can be unwound.
Not by itself. While you are living it is disregarded for income tax and reported on your own return, and at death the assets are included in your estate. What it saves is probate cost, delay, and publicity.
Yes. The pour-over will directs anything still in your individual name into the trust, names your executor, and designates guardians for minor children — none of which the trust does.
We quote a fixed fee in writing for a defined scope after the scoping call, and it is stated in the engagement letter before any work begins. The drivers are how many documents, entities, properties, and jurisdictions are in play. Anything beyond that scope is quoted separately before it starts.
Next step
Fixed-fee estate planning for clients in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio.
Drew Jacobs is licensed in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Nothing on this page constitutes legal advice or an offer to represent you in a jurisdiction in which we are not licensed.