Williams Legal Services

05/26/2026

One of the most common questions we hear: if I already have a will, do I need a trust?

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

A will goes through probate. That is by design. In Missouri, probate is public, takes time, and costs money. For families with real estate or complex assets, those costs add up.

A trust avoids probate. It also handles incapacity in a way a will cannot. If you are in an accident or become seriously ill, the trust continues operating under your successor trustee, with no court involvement.

Having both usually makes sense. A trust to hold the assets. A pour-over will to catch anything not transferred to the trust before death.

The will alone is a starting point. The trust is what makes the plan complete.

05/25/2026

Your will does not control everything.

Retirement accounts pass to whoever is named on the beneficiary form. Life insurance goes to the named beneficiary. Joint accounts transfer to the surviving owner. In most cases, none of those assets go through the will.

A will controls only your probate estate. Property in your name alone, with no beneficiary designation and no co-owner.

For many families, a significant portion of their wealth sits completely outside the will. Which means a will, by itself, is not a complete estate plan.

Knowing what your will controls and what it does not is how you start building something that actually works.

05/24/2026

Having a will does not mean your estate settles itself.

A will is a set of instructions for the probate court. It tells the court who gets what, who is in charge, and who should raise your minor children.

The court still has to approve it. The process still takes time. And the will must be valid under Missouri law. Properly signed. Properly witnessed. If it is not, none of those instructions matter.

The will is the starting point, not the finish line. If you do not have one, Missouri's intestacy laws decide who inherits. You do not get a vote after the fact.

05/22/2026

A will in Missouri goes through probate. So does everything else in your probate estate. The accounts with named beneficiaries, the joint property, the assets in your trust: none of that goes through your will. It passes a different way entirely.

That distinction is at the center of most estate planning conversations. The new Estate Planning Library series from Williams Legal Services starts there.

A Last Will and Testament controls less than most people think. Learn what a will actually does, what it does not cover, and what Missouri law requires. From Williams Legal Services.

04/06/2026

If you die without a will in Missouri, you are dying without written instructions that say who should receive your probate assets. If you die without one, Missouri law supplies a default plan for who receives your assets, and that default plan plus the related court process is what most people are talking about when they refer to probate court.

Now, when I talk to people about this topic, it seems they usually really want two general pieces of information.

1) Who is going to receive my assets

2) What needs to happen for those people to actually receive the assets

I wrote a plain English post that walks through the most common real life scenarios, including the spouse plus children scenarios that surprise people.

Read it here: https://williamslegal.services/what-happens-if-i-die-without-a-will-in-missouri/

General information only. Not legal advice. If you want help applying this to your situation, schedule a consultation.

If you die without a will in Missouri, Missouri law supplies a default plan for who receives your probate assets and a court process may be needed for anyone to access and distribute those assets. Here is what that usually looks like for common family situations.