How can a living trust be preferable to a last will?
If you use a last will to state your final wishes, you would name an executor in the document. This is the person that would handle the estate administration tasks after you are gone. The executor would be required to admit the will to probate, and the court would provide supervision during the process.
Probate will take somewhere in the vicinity of eight months to a year if there are no complications, and the heirs do not receive their inheritances while the estate is being probated by the court. There are considerable expenses that accumulate, and probate is a public proceeding, so privacy is lost.
Assets that have been conveyed into a living trust can be transferred outside of probate. This is a major advantage, and another one is the ability to include spendthrift protections. These are a couple of the benefits, but there are a number of others.