Wills and Trusts in New York

Often, yes. A revocable trust does the heavy lifting — avoiding probate and providing an incapacity backstop — while a pour-over will catches any asset you did not retitle into the trust and, critically, names a guardian for minor children, which a trust cannot do. Together they cover gaps neither document covers alone.

A will only takes effect after death and must be admitted to probate by the New York Surrogate’s Court before anything can be distributed. A funded living trust is effective the moment it is created, owns property in its own name, operates privately, and passes its assets at death with no probate at all. A will is public and posthumous; a trust is private and lifetime.

A will-only plan is often appropriate for a younger client with simple assets, no real property, and no pressing privacy or incapacity concerns. Once you own a home, hold assets in more than one state, want to avoid the nine-to-eighteen-month Surrogate’s Court timeline, or want a clean incapacity backstop, a revocable trust usually becomes worthwhile.

A pour-over will is a short will used alongside a revocable living trust. Instead of distributing assets to individuals, it "pours" anything you still owned in your own name at death into your existing trust, so one unified, private set of terms governs everything. It is the safety net that protects a trust-based plan against incomplete funding.

A testamentary trust is written inside your will and only comes into existence after death, once the will is probated — so it does not avoid probate. A living (inter vivos) trust is created and funded while you are alive and bypasses probate from the start. Both can stagger a child’s inheritance by age; only the funded living trust keeps the estate out of court.

No. A revocable trust is transparent for tax purposes — New York and the IRS treat its assets as still yours, so it saves no estate or income tax. Its benefits are probate avoidance, privacy, and incapacity protection. Estate-tax savings come from irrevocable trusts, such as a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust or an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust.

A typical uncontested estate moves through the New York Surrogate’s Court in roughly nine to eighteen months, and longer if an heir is hard to locate or the will is contested. The proceeding is public. A funded revocable trust avoids this process entirely for assets titled in the trust’s name, which is the main reason many New Yorkers choose one.

Your estate passes by intestacy under EPTL § 4-1.1, which sets a fixed order of inheritance the law chooses for you — not necessarily what you would have wanted. The Surrogate’s Court appoints an administrator, unmarried partners and friends receive nothing, and minor children may need a court-appointed guardian. A simple will avoids all of this.

Generic templates frequently fail New York’s execution rules under EPTL § 3-2.1, ignore the spousal elective share, do not coordinate a pour-over will with a trust, and miss the New York estate-tax cliff. A will that does not meet the witnessing formalities is invalid, and the estate then passes by intestacy — the exact outcome you tried to prevent.

The instruments themselves are not taxed, but the assets they distribute may be. For 2026 the New York estate-tax exemption is about $7.35 million per decedent, and New York applies a "cliff": an estate exceeding 105% of the exemption (about $7.72 million) loses the exemption entirely and is taxed from the first dollar. Planning for larger estates targets this gap with irrevocable trusts.

Yes. A will is amended by a codicil or simply rewritten and re-executed under EPTL § 3-2.1. A revocable trust can be amended or revoked by you at any time while you are competent. Irrevocable trusts are far harder to change, though New York’s decanting statute (EPTL § 7-1.9) sometimes lets a trustee move assets into a more favorable trust.

We charge flat fees that vary by complexity. A will-based plan for a single person with simple assets costs less than a trust-based plan for a married couple with real estate and business interests. We quote the full fee in writing after your free consultation — no hourly billing, no per-page charges, and no surprises.