For some, never. Even if you own only your house and its contents, there is no point in forcing your home through probate when a simple trust could keep your property intact. In fact, often small estates are hit the hardest by probate. In these cases property must often be sold to raise cash for the probate and attorney fees. Simply put, a living trust helps small estates avoid probate.
Larger estates get to cash in on probate avoidance AND federal estate tax and gift taxes avoidance.
Some of the attorneys we connect you with at the Orthodox Christian Foundation will do your living trust for as little as one tenth of what probate would be. But they can save as much as ten times their cost in probate fees on small estates. The trust set up fee is one time only. Maintenance charges or ongoing expenses beyond the initial fee are rare. But it is a very simply Pour Over Will, which says that you leave everything to your trust.