A successor trustee administers the trust after the grantor dies. These tools cover reasonable trustee compensation in your state, how a trust account is opened at a bank, which tax returns the trust files, and the steps to settle the trust from the first notice to the final distribution.
Find out what's fair compensation for serving as trustee. Compare family, professional, and corporate trustee rates based on your situation.
Answer a few questions to find out if an estate needs full probate, qualifies for simplified probate, or can avoid probate entirely with a small estate affidavit.
Understand your state's estate planning landscape. See will execution requirements, probate procedures, trust administration rules, and what happens if you die without a plan.
Moving states? Find out if your will, trust, healthcare proxy, or power of attorney will be recognized in your new state. See the legal basis for interstate recognition and any potential issues.
Compare how each bank opens or retitles a deposit account to a revocable living trust — the channels, the certification of trust it accepts, whose taxpayer number the account is opened under — and what its successor trustee procedure asks for after a death.
See which federal and state tax returns need to be filed after a death. Check income tax, estate tax, and fiduciary return requirements with deadlines, form links, and tax clearance rules.
Get a personalized plan for settling a trust after the grantor passes away. Covers beneficiary notification, asset transfers, creditor handling, taxes, and distributions.
The Trustee Compensation Calculator applies your state's standard, a statutory schedule where the state has one and reasonable compensation elsewhere, to the trust's size.
The Trust Account Opening Guide covers what a bank asks for when a trust account is opened or an existing account is retitled: the certification of trust, the trustee's identification, and whose taxpayer number the account carries.
Assets titled in the trust pass under the trust document without a court process. The Probate Decision Tool shows whether assets left outside the trust, such as an account still in the grantor's name, require probate in your state.
The Post-Death Tax Filing Guide covers the grantor's final return, the trust's income tax return once the trust becomes irrevocable, and any estate tax return that applies at the federal or state level.
The Trust Settlement Plan lays out the steps for your state: notices to beneficiaries, gathering and valuing assets, paying debts and taxes, accounting, and distribution. The State Estate Law Guide covers the trust code provisions those steps rest on.