A Living Trust is VERY DIFFERENT from a Living Will. A Living Trust is a way to manage and control property during your lifetime and to distribute it at your death. See our section on Estate Planning. With a Living Trust you create a trust when you are still alive, usually naming yourself as the trustee. You transfer all or most of your property to the trust during your lifetime. You can take your property out again or change or cancel the trust at any time, so Living Trusts are also called Revocable Trusts. In the Trust, you name a Successor Trustee who will handle the Trust after you die. After your death the Successor Trustee will distribute the Trust property to your beneficiaries under the directions in the Trust without going through probate.
A Living Will is a document where you put your wishes about how you want your health care to be handled if you should become incapacitated and unable to make health care decisions for yourself. For example, you might say that you don’t want to be kept on life support longer than a specified time unless there’s a strong likelihood you will recover. On the other hand, you might say that you want to be kept on life support as long as possible. So a Living Will isn’t really a Will at all. It doesn’t concern your property, only your desires about health care.
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