Years ago, when my mother moved from California to Utah, she spent thousands of dollars to have her estate plan updated to conform with Utah law. She had always believed that having a trust in place would spare her loved ones the cost, delay and stress of probate proceedings. Following her recent passing, we were disappointed to learn that the estate attorney she hired had failed to implement the plan he had prepared by actually placing her house and other assets in the trust. Consequently, our family would have to probate her estate after all.

This scenario is all too common. The best estate plan in the world yields little or no benefit if not properly executed. After this experience with my mother’s estate, I determined to develop a better way to truly avoid probate .

For years, our firm has been managing trust accounts for UPMA members. The online portal we developed not only allows members to make contributions and withdrawals from their trust accounts, but to designate beneficiaries as well. Why not expand those services to allow members to place additional assets other than their gold and silver coin in trust.

The basic trust is a member benefit. Our firm now simply provides UPMA members the option to further tailor that trust to meet their individual needs, as well as the opportunity for periodic reviews to make sure all the assets requiring protection are actually placed and maintained in trust.

For those that already have trust documents in place, by all means make sure the trust is properly funded. If not, a low cost alternative now exists through our collaboration with UPMA to establish and fund trusts that can be a real blessing to loved ones at an already difficult time of loss.