Living Trust Lawyer in New York City

As part of our Estate & Family Planning practice, we help clients set up a revocable living trust — a legal arrangement you create during your lifetime to hold your assets, with you as both creator and manager for as long as you're able. You keep full control while you're alive, and the trust names who takes over managing things if you become incapacitated and who receives your property when you die. Because the trust — not you personally — technically owns the assets, your family can typically avoid New York's probate process entirely, which is public, and can take many months even for straightforward estates.

Here’s how this typically works in New York:

1. We draft the trust document, naming you as trustee and beneficiary for as long as you're able.
2. We fund the trust — retitling your accounts, real estate, and other assets into the trust's name. (This is the step people miss when they try to DIY a trust — an unfunded trust doesn't avoid probate.)
3. You keep managing your assets exactly as before; nothing changes day to day.
4. If you become incapacitated or pass away, your named successor trustee steps in immediately, without a court proceeding.

• If you own real estate and want your family to avoid New York probate court after you're gone
• If you want a plan for who steps in to manage your affairs if you become unable to, without going through a guardianship proceeding
• If you have a blended family and want more control over exactly how and when assets are distributed
• If privacy matters to you — trusts don't become public record the way a probated will does
• Alongside a will, not instead of one — most clients use both together as a complete plan