Trust vs. Will: What Each One Does, What Each One Costs, and When You Need Both
The Million Dollar Question: Aretha Franklin left two handwritten wills with conflicting instructions — one in a locked cabinet, one found under a couch cushion. How many years passed between when they were discovered and when a jury ruled which one was valid?
A) 1 year B) 2 years C) 4 years D) 8 yearsRead on for the answer.
Prince died in 2016 with no will. Aretha Franklin died in 2018 with, as it turned out, two of them. Both estates ended up in extended court fights anyway — one because there was nothing to interpret, the other because there was too much. Neither story is really about celebrity; it is about the difference between having a document and having a plan that actually works, which is the question this piece is built to answer.
What it is
A will is a set of written instructions that takes effect only at death and only through a probate court. You sign it, store it, and nothing happens until you die — at which point a court admits it, appoints the executor it names (or one the court picks if there isn’t one), and that person carries out its terms under the court’s supervision.
A trust is a standing legal arrangement that exists and can operate the moment it is signed and funded — meaning the moment specific assets are actually retitled into it. A revocable living trust manages property while you’re alive, keeps working without interruption if you become incapacitated, and continues working after death without necessarily going near a courthouse, because the assets were never titled in your name to begin with.
That is the entire mechanical distinction: a will is a court-administered plan for assets still in your name at death; a trust is a privately administered arrangement for assets already moved out of your name. Everything else in this piece follows from that one line.
Die with neither, and state intestate succession law decides who gets what — not your family’s preference, a court’s sense of fairness, or anything you ever said out loud. That is what happened to Prince, a Minnesota resident who died without a will despite a career spent controlling every other detail of his business. Comerica Bank & Trust, appointed by the court to administer the estate, and the IRS spent years apart on what it was even worth — Comerica said $82.3 million, the IRS said $163.2 million — before the two sides finally agreed on $156.4 million in January 2022, nearly six years after he died.
Aretha Franklin shows the opposite failure mode. She had not one but two handwritten (holographic) wills, found in her Michigan home in 2019 — one dated 2010 in a locked cabinet, one dated 2014 under a couch cushion — naming different terms for her sons. A document existed. It still took a jury to decide which document controlled.
Who uses it
Nearly everyone who owns anything or has a minor child needs a will — it is the only instrument that lets a parent nominate a guardian, and it is the backstop for whatever a trust doesn’t catch. Yet most Americans don’t have one: Caring.com’s 2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study, based on a YouGov poll of more than 2,500 adults, found 24% of Americans have a will in 2025, down from 33% in 2022. The same survey put living-trust ownership at 13%. A separate LegalZoom analysis of more than 260,000 estate plans created between January 2022 and June 2026 puts it more starkly: more than half of American adults have no estate plan of any kind.
A trust earns its cost at a different threshold than “being rich.” The cases where it clearly pays for itself: owning real property in more than one state (each one otherwise means a separate probate proceeding), having a beneficiary who shouldn’t receive a lump sum outright (a minor, someone with a disability, someone you don’t trust with money yet), wanting continuity of management through incapacity without a court-appointed conservatorship, or simply valuing that a will becomes a public probate record and a trust generally does not. None of those is purely a function of net worth — a $400,000 vacation condo in a second state creates the same multi-state probate problem a $4 million one does.
Why they use it
A will’s case for itself is that it is cheap, fast to execute, and legally sufficient on its own — for a simple estate with named beneficiaries on retirement accounts and life insurance (which pass outside probate regardless), a will plus those beneficiary designations may be the entire estate plan a person needs.
A trust’s case is narrower and more specific: privacy, incapacity planning, and probate avoidance — but only for what actually gets put into it. LegalZoom’s 2026 data found trust adoption climbing fastest in states with comparatively low probate costs and simple procedures — Iowa (+23.2 percentage points), Kentucky (+23.1), and Arkansas (+21.7) between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026 — which is itself a tell: people are increasingly buying trusts in places where the probate problem they’re solving is smaller, suggesting a fair amount of that growth is reflexive rather than needs-driven.
Neither document, on its own, prevents a dispute. Aretha Franklin’s estate had instructions in writing, in her own hand, and her sons still spent years disagreeing about which instructions counted.
How it works
Executing a will requires, in most states, your signature plus two witnesses (sometimes notarization for a “self-proving” affidavit that speeds up the court’s acceptance later). Funding a trust requires something harder: actually retitling assets into the trust’s name — the house deed, the brokerage account, the LLC interest — one by one. A trust document that was never funded is, legally, close to useless; the assets it was supposed to hold are still in your name, and still subject to probate.
That gap is exactly why the pour-over will exists — a short will, used alongside a trust, that simply directs anything left outside the trust at death to pour into it. California’s probate code specifically validates this kind of gift-to-trustee, because drafters assume, correctly, that trusts get under-funded. In other words: even people with a trust generally still need a will. The reverse is not true — a will works fine with no trust at all.
If you have neither, intestate succession statutes assign your property by a fixed formula — typically spouse and children first, then more distant relatives — with no reference to your actual relationships or wishes. That is the scenario Prince’s estate landed in: six heirs, two of whom died during the resulting dispute, before three of them eventually sold their stakes to the music company Primary Wave, which ended up holding the largest single interest at 42%, without a majority.
One underused shortcut deserves a mention: Texas’s “muniment of title” procedure. Where an estate has a valid will and no unpaid debts besides a mortgage, a Texas court can admit the will purely as evidence of title — the will itself transfers the property, with no executor appointed and no ongoing administration — under Tex. Est. Code § 257.001. It is, functionally, a will doing a trust’s job of skipping full probate, for the specific case where the estate is clean enough to qualify.
And a handwritten will is not automatically valid everywhere it’s found. Michigan, where Aretha Franklin’s were discovered, is one of roughly half the states that recognizes a holographic will: under MCL 700.2502(2), it is valid “whether or not witnessed” so long as it is dated and the signature and “material portions” are in the testator’s own handwriting — no witnesses required at all, which is precisely why a document under a couch cushion could even be in contention.
What it costs
A will is inexpensive by design. A handwritten or free-template version can cost nothing beyond witnessing or notary fees of roughly $10–$20; a paid online tool runs as little as $100. Hiring an attorney for an individual will typically runs $940 to $1,500, per The U.S. Will Registry’s own cost breakdown, plus several hundred dollars more to add a spouse.
A trust costs more up front and keeps costing afterward. LegalZoom’s 2025 pricing guide puts attorney drafting-plus-funding at $1,000 to $4,000; funding itself adds cost beyond the document — retitling real estate typically runs $100–$200 in recording fees per property, on top of the legal work. If you serve as your own trustee, which most people do, there’s no ongoing fee for that role. If a corporate trustee is appointed instead — common for a beneficiary who can’t yet manage money, or for long-term administration — those fees are real and recurring: one published schedule from a federally insured credit union’s trust-services arm runs 1.25% on the first million with a $2,500 minimum annual fee, which on a $500,000 trust works out to roughly $62,500 across a decade, far more than the document cost to draft.
Neither price tag captures the real risk of skipping the plan altogether. Prince’s estate spent years of legal fees arguing over a $156.4 million valuation that existed only because there was no document settling the number, or anything else, in advance.
Hidden costs and tradeoffs
The single most common and most expensive trust mistake is the unfunded trust: paying $1,000–$4,000 for a document, then never retitling the house or the brokerage account into it. The trust does nothing for those assets. They sit in your name, your pour-over will has to catch them, and the estate goes through the exact probate process the trust was bought to avoid — for whatever got left behind, which in practice is often most of it.
Amending the two instruments isn’t symmetric either. A will is amended with a codicil or simply redone, each time requiring the same signing and witnessing formality as the original. A trust amendment generally carries the same formality requirement, but there’s a second layer: anything already retitled into the trust stays retitled, so an amendment changes who benefits, not what’s actually inside the vehicle — which means mistakes in the original funding step tend to persist through every later amendment.
And no document eliminates the possibility of a fight. Aretha Franklin’s sons backed two different handwritten wills — Kecalf and Edward supported the 2014 couch-cushion version, Ted White II backed the 2010 cabinet version — and the dispute ran from the 2019 discovery to a July 2023 jury verdict. Having something in writing narrowed the fight to “which document,” rather than “no document at all.” It did not prevent the fight.
What people get wrong
That a will avoids probate. It is the opposite: a will is instructions for the probate court, not an alternative to it. Only a funded trust (or assets that pass outside probate entirely, like beneficiary-designated retirement accounts and life insurance, or jointly titled property) skips the court process — and even then, only for what was actually moved into it.
That having a trust means you no longer need a will. You almost certainly still do, in the form of a pour-over will, specifically because trusts routinely end up under-funded — a car bought after the trust was signed, a bank account opened and never retitled, anything inherited directly. Without a pour-over will, those leftover assets fall to intestate succession instead of to your chosen heirs.
That a handwritten will is valid anywhere you leave it. Only in roughly half of US states, each with its own formal requirements. Michigan’s statute happens to require no witnesses at all for a dated, self-handwritten document — which is exactly why a will scrawled by hand and tucked under a cushion could end up in front of a jury instead of being dismissed outright.
That not having any plan is rare. It is closer to the norm. By Caring.com’s count, 76% of American adults had no will as of 2025, and by LegalZoom’s broader count, more than half had no estate plan of any kind. Prince — a musician famous for controlling every detail of his contracts and his catalog — is not an outlier so much as a famous example of the median outcome.
Bottom line
The answer is C: four years — from the 2019 discovery of Aretha Franklin’s two wills to the jury’s July 2023 verdict on which one controlled.
Everyone with any asset or a minor child benefits from a will; it is the cheapest, fastest-executing document available and the only place to nominate a guardian. A trust is a genuine addition on top of that, not a substitute for it, and it earns its materially higher cost only when a real feature of the estate calls for it — property in more than one state, a beneficiary who needs managed distributions, a preference for keeping the estate off the public probate record, or incapacity planning that a will cannot provide, since a will does nothing until death. Buy one reflexively, without funding it properly, and it can cost more than the probate it was meant to avoid. Skip both, as Prince did, and a court decides everything by formula, on its own schedule, for however many years that takes.
What this piece is, and what it is not. This is a comparison of what a will and a trust each do, cost, and fail to do — not legal, tax, or financial advice, and not a recommendation for or against any instrument or provider. Probate procedure, holographic-will validity, and intestate succession are matters of state law that differ substantially from state to state; figures here are illustrative of the states named, not a 50-state survey. The named-individual estate details (Prince, Aretha Franklin) are drawn from public court filings and the news reporting cited below, not from any non-public source, and are presented as reported, not independently verified by this publication. Nothing here establishes an attorney-client or advisory relationship. Anyone making an actual estate-planning decision should take their own facts to a licensed estate attorney in their own state. See Editorial Standards.
Methods and sources. Will and trust ownership figures are from Caring.com’s 2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study (YouGov poll of 2,500+ US adults, updated September 17, 2025): 24% of Americans have a will in 2025 versus 33% in 2022, and 13% have a living trust. The “more than half of adults have no estate plan” figure and the state-by-state trust-adoption growth (Iowa +23.2 percentage points, Kentucky +23.1, Arkansas +21.7, first half of 2025 to first half of 2026) are from a LegalZoom data release covering more than 260,000 consumer estate plans created January 2022 through June 2026. Will-drafting cost ($940–$1,500 for an individual) is The U.S. Will Registry’s own published figure. Trust drafting-and-funding cost ($1,000–$4,000) and real-estate funding/recording costs ($100–$200 per property) are from LegalZoom’s 2025 living-trust price guide. The corporate trustee fee example (1.25% on the first million, $2,500 minimum annual fee) is the same published credit-union trust-services schedule cited and verified in our companion piece, What Is a Trust Fund? Prince’s estate facts — the $156.4 million final valuation agreed in January 2022, Comerica Bank & Trust’s $82.3 million figure, the IRS’s $163.2 million figure, six heirs (two of whom died during the dispute), and Primary Wave’s 42% stake — are from Rolling Stone’s reporting on the settlement. Aretha Franklin’s estate facts — two handwritten wills discovered in 2019 (one dated 2010 in a locked cabinet, one dated 2014 found under a couch cushion), the sons’ positions, and the July 2023 jury verdict — are from The A.V. Club’s reporting. Michigan’s holographic-will requirements are quoted directly from MCL 700.2502(2). Texas’s muniment-of-title procedure and the independent-versus-dependent administration distinction are from Nolo’s Texas probate overview, citing Tex. Est. Code § 257.001. This draft was checked line by line before publication: all named-individual dollar figures were traced to the cited reporting rather than to secondary law-firm summaries, and no figure in this piece relies on the unsourced “probate costs 3–8% of the estate” claim that recurs across estate-planning marketing but could not be traced to any government, court, or academic source in our review for the companion piece.
Related reading: What Is a Trust Fund? What It Does, What It Costs, and Who Actually Needs One · Inheritance: The Transfer of Wealth Between Generations · Legacy: Inheritance, Heirs, and Family Continuity · Taxes: How Wealth Is Structured and Preserved · Generational Wealth: How Long Fortunes Actually Last · Probate · Irrevocable trust · Grantor trust
