Another good book is "Living Trusts for Everyone" by Ronald Farrington Sharpe.
If you don't know how they work, how can you trust anyone to do right by you? Doing it wrong will cost you money now and your heirs later.
As you might know, wills become public once you die and probate is VERY expensive (and no, you can not avoid probate for anything that is not in a trust or "Joint Tenancy"). With the right instructions your heirs will not need a lawyer to execute your trust.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK! A trust is not an one hour job and done. Having a poor trust is worse than not having a trust at all.
I am not a lawyer, CPA or anything like that. But we were burned by a bad trust (not ours, someone else's), and we could nothing about it. Getting a lawyer to fight a trust is worthless, a trust, no matter how poorly written is a legal document and very difficult to fight after the death of the person that drew it up.
Spend time to get it right the first time.
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