Living Trusts and Other Ways to Avoid Probate

Rolcik is a practicing estate attorney and the plain-language approach to living trusts and probate avoidance is genuinely useful for non-lawyers — that combination of real credentials and accessible writing is worth something. The serious problem is that this was published in 2002, and estate tax thresholds, portability rules, and planning instruments have changed substantially in the intervening two decades. Use it to understand the concepts, but do not rely on it for any actual planning without current legal advice.