What's in a probate vs living trust comparison
Each state page below compares that state's typical probate cost against typical living trust setup cost, so the tradeoff is a real, state-specific number rather than generic estate-planning advice. Every state page also covers a decision framework for whether a trust is worth it given the estate's size and complexity, and the funding mistakes that most often leave a trust failing to avoid probate anyway. Every figure is tied to a cited statute or official court source — see our methodology for how we verify each one.
What a living trust actually avoids — and what it doesn't
A living trust avoids probate only for the specific assets that were actually retitled into the trust's name while the person creating it was alive, a step usually called funding. A house deeded into the trust, a brokerage account retitled in the trust's name, a bank account owned by the trust — those pass directly to beneficiaries with no court involvement. Anything left in the person's own name at death, on the other hand, still goes through probate regardless of how carefully the trust document itself was drafted. This gap between "have a trust" and "actually funded the trust" is the single most common reason a living trust fails to deliver the probate-free outcome people expect.
Is it worth it — the real tradeoff
Setting up a trust has a real, mostly one-time cost, paid while the person is alive: drafting the trust document and then retitling assets into it. Probate has its own cost, paid by the estate after death, and that figure is set almost entirely by state law — some states are inexpensive to probate through, others are considerably more so. The decision genuinely comes down to comparing those two state-specific numbers against each other, plus how much the estate's owner values avoiding the delay and publicity of a court process, which a trust also sidesteps. A large, complex estate in a high-cost probate state tends to make the strongest case for a trust; a modest estate in a state with an inexpensive, streamlined small estate process often makes a weaker one.