An administration of a trust is required upon the death of the person who established the trust. If the legal title to the bulk of the property in your estate is held by the Trustee of your trust, then the administration and distribution of that property upon your death is handled much more simply, much more quickly, and at much less expense than if that property had to be probated. A trust administration is NOT usually a court-supervised process. Yet its ultimate goal is also the transfer of property from an individual who has died (the “decedent”) to that individual’s beneficiaries, as identified in the document governing the trust.
Therefore, the advantages of a trust administration over a probate proceeding include a quicker distribution of the property to beneficiaries, its far more private nature due to no court supervision of the process (i.e., no proceedings in court), and, usually, it is a less expensive manner of distributing property to beneficiaries.
Costs to Administer Trust are Lower than the cost of Probate.
As indicated above, probate fees include the compensation paid to the Executor of the estate and the Attorney the Executor retains to assist him or her with the administration of the estate. Such compensation is fixed by law. By contrast, the fees to administer a trust, which include the fees paid to the Trustee and the Attorney the Trustee retains to assist with the trust administration are not set by law. Usually, these fees are paid with some reference to the actual amount of time needed to administer the trust. This often results in a much lower cost to the estate than if a probate were necessary. In addition, there are no filing fees to pay.