The Suze Orman living trust kit produces legally valid documents in most straightforward situations, but a valid document and a working estate plan are not the same thing. Whether the trust actually does its job depends on three things the $99 price doesn’t guarantee: executing the paperwork correctly under your state’s rules, retitling your assets into the trust’s name, and having a situation simple enough that a template can handle it.
What You Get for $99
The product, branded “Must Have Documents,” is an online questionnaire that generates four documents: a revocable living trust, a will, a financial power of attorney, and an advance directive with a durable power of attorney for healthcare. You answer questions about your assets, family, and wishes; the software drafts the documents; and you print them along with instructions for signing, notarizing, and witnessing. The purchase includes AI-driven assistance, live chat support, and unlimited updates at no extra charge.1MUST HAVE™ Documents. MUST HAVE Documents
What’s not included: an attorney reviewing your documents, help retitling your assets into the trust, or state-specific guidance beyond the general signing instructions. That gap is where most problems start.
What Makes a Living Trust Legally Valid
A living trust is a legal arrangement you create during your lifetime to hold assets and direct how they pass to beneficiaries after you die.2Cornell Law Institute. Inter Vivos Because the trust is a separate legal entity, assets held in its name transfer to beneficiaries without going through probate.
For any trust to be recognized, DIY or attorney-drafted, it must satisfy a short list of requirements. More than 35 states have adopted some version of the Uniform Trust Code, and the rest follow similar principles:
- Capacity and intent. You must be of sound mind and clearly intend to create a trust.
- An identifiable trustee. You can serve as your own trustee initially, but you also need to name a successor trustee for when you’re incapacitated or dead.
- Identifiable beneficiaries. The document must clearly state who gets what.
- Trust property. There must be actual assets transferred into the trust. A trust holding nothing is an empty container.
- A lawful purpose.
- Proper execution. Your signature, plus notarization or witnesses depending on your state.
A Suze Orman trust that satisfies all six is as legal as one drafted by a lawyer. The real question is whether yours will satisfy all six once you’ve completed it, and whether satisfying them is enough for your particular situation.
Where the Kit Falls Short
Generating the documents is maybe 20 percent of the work. The template gives you a sense of completion before the job is actually done.
User complaints about the kit cluster around a few themes. Some buyers have reported that attorneys reviewing their finished documents found the language outdated or insufficient for their state. Others have noted the program’s flexibility is limited, particularly when there’s more than one contingent beneficiary or an unusual asset structure. Difficulty obtaining refunds has also come up.
Templates work best when your life matches the template: a single home, standard bank and investment accounts, a clear list of beneficiaries, no family complications. The further you drift from that profile, the more likely a template misses something that matters. Situations that typically need professional drafting:
- Real estate in more than one state. Each state has its own rules for deeding property into a trust.
- Blended families. Competing interests between a current spouse and children from a prior marriage need careful drafting.
- A beneficiary with disabilities. A direct inheritance can disqualify someone from Medicaid or SSI. A special needs trust is a separate, specialized document.
- Business interests. Transferring ownership into a trust involves operating agreements, buy-sell provisions, and sometimes lender consent.
- Estates approaching the federal estate tax exemption. A revocable trust by itself does nothing for estate tax.
Funding Is the Step Most Buyers Skip
An unfunded trust is the single most common estate planning failure, and it’s especially prevalent with DIY kits. Funding means retitling your assets so the trust, not you personally, is the legal owner. If you sign a beautifully drafted trust document but never move your assets into it, those assets pass through probate exactly as if the trust didn’t exist.
For real estate, funding means executing a new deed transferring the property from your name to yourself as trustee, then recording that deed with your county recorder. Recording fees typically run from about $10 to $90. For bank and investment accounts, you contact each institution and ask to retitle the account in the trust’s name. Stocks, bonds, and brokerage accounts work similarly.
Funding isn’t a one-time task. Every property you buy, every new account you open, every significant asset you acquire after the trust is created needs to be titled in the trust’s name. People who fund once and move on tend to accumulate unfunded assets over the years, which only surface after they die.
The Will That Comes With the Kit
Even a well-funded trust needs a backup will. A pour-over will directs any assets you own at death that aren’t already in the trust to “pour over” into it.3Cornell Law Institute. Pour-Over Will It catches whatever you forgot to retitle.
Assets captured by a pour-over will still pass through probate before they reach the trust, so this is a safety net, not a substitute for funding. But it beats having stray assets distributed under your state’s intestacy formula to relatives you may not have intended to benefit.
The kit does include a will. Some users have reported that the will generated by the software did not function as a proper pour-over will. If you use the kit, read the will carefully and confirm it specifically directs residual assets into your trust.
A will also does things a trust can’t, including naming a guardian for minor children and appointing an executor for your probate estate. Even people with a fully funded trust need a will for those purposes.
What a Revocable Trust Won’t Do
Two common assumptions buyers bring to a kit like this are wrong, and the misunderstanding is expensive.
It Won’t Lower Your Income Taxes
While you’re alive and the trust is revocable, the IRS treats you as the owner of all trust assets. Under the grantor trust rules, you report trust income on your personal Form 1040 and the trust files no return of its own.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 676 – Power to Revoke A revocable trust is tax-neutral during your lifetime. The IRS has specifically flagged schemes claiming otherwise.5Internal Revenue Service. Abusive Trust Tax Evasion Schemes – Questions and Answers If anyone tells you a revocable living trust will lower your tax bill, that’s a red flag.
It Won’t Shield Assets From Creditors
Because you keep full control over a revocable trust, including the power to take assets back at any time, your creditors can reach those assets just as easily as if you held them in your own name. Asset protection requires an irrevocable trust, where you permanently give up control. That’s a different document with different consequences, and it’s not what this kit produces.
When to Pay for an Attorney Instead
A $99 kit is a reasonable starting point if your estate is modest, your family structure is simple, and you’re willing to do the funding work yourself. The gap between “saves money” and “costs more in the long run” is real, though. An improperly drafted or unfunded trust can leave your family with probate, intestacy fights, and tax problems that dwarf any attorney’s fee.
Hire an estate planning attorney if you own real estate in more than one state, have a blended family, have a child or other beneficiary with special needs, own a business or partnership interest, have an estate large enough to owe federal estate tax, or want ongoing help keeping the plan current as your life changes. Most estate planning attorneys charge between $1,500 and $3,000 for a complete trust-based plan, including drafting, execution, and initial funding assistance.
If you’ve already finished a DIY trust and want a second set of eyes, paying an attorney a few hundred dollars to review the completed documents is a middle option. That review can catch state-specific execution errors, confirm the structure holds together, and flag gaps the template missed.