{"id":38,"date":"2026-07-26T20:25:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T20:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/2026\/07\/26\/why-the-cheap-trust-costs-the-most-contested-estates-in-springfield-county\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T20:25:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T20:25:26","slug":"why-the-cheap-trust-costs-the-most-contested-estates-in-springfield-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/2026\/07\/26\/why-the-cheap-trust-costs-the-most-contested-estates-in-springfield-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the cheap trust costs the most: contested estates in Springfield County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four drafting shortcuts we see again and again in probate court, and what each one costs the family that inherits them.<\/p>\n<p>The unfunded trust is first: a beautifully drafted document that no asset was ever transferred into, which sends the whole estate through probate anyway. Second is the stale beneficiary designation on a retirement account, which overrides the will entirely. Third is the amendment signed without a witness anyone can later locate. Fourth is the family home left to four children in equal shares with no mechanism for one of them to buy the others out.<\/p>\n<p>Each of these is cheap to prevent and expensive to litigate \u2014 usually somewhere between eighteen months and a third of the estate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four drafting shortcuts we see again and again in probate court, and what each one costs the family that inherits them. The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-estates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blockwpthemes.com\/demo\/bwp-attorney-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}