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How much does it cost to open a trust fund?

Work out what a trust costs from your own attorney's quote rather than a figure we invented. Put in the drafting fee, what it takes to retitle your assets into it, the size of the pot, the trustee's rate and how long you expect the trust to run. The calculator adds it up and separates the money you pay once from the money you pay every year, which is the split the opening quote does not show you.

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The question people ask is what it costs to open a trust, and the honest answer is that opening it is the part that ends. A drafting fee is paid once and then it is done. A trustee who charges a percentage of the assets is paid every year the trust exists, and because the fee is struck against the pot rather than against the hours, it rises when the investments do, without anybody doing more work. Ten years of that is a different order of number from the quote you were comparing. The counterweight is just as real and it is in the same box: if a family member is serving as trustee without a fee, that line is zero and the setup genuinely is most of what the trust costs. Both stories come out of the same arithmetic, which is why the rate is a box for you to fill rather than a number we chose for you.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

What the attorney charges to write the trust document. The default is ours, a placeholder, and yours is on your quote.
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This is the number the search question is about, and it is the number this page is going to tell you matters least. It varies with your state, with whether the trust is revocable or irrevocable, and above all with how complicated your instructions are: a trust that leaves everything to two adult children in equal shares is a different afternoon's work from one that staggers distributions to a minor across fifteen years with a condition attached. Ask what the fee covers before you compare two of them. The trust document, the pour-over will that catches whatever you forget to retitle, the powers of attorney and the deed work may be one flat fee at one firm and four line items at another, and a fee that quietly excludes the deed work will win a comparison it should have lost.
What it costs to actually move the assets into the trust: new deeds, recording fees at the county, paperwork at the bank or the broker. The default is ours and editable.
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The line that decides whether the document does anything at all, which is a strange job for one of the slighter numbers on the page. A trust governs the assets that have been retitled into its name, and it reaches no further than that. A house whose deed still reads your own name is not in the trust, whatever the trust says about it, and it will go through probate exactly as if you had never signed. Attorneys call this funding the trust, and it is the step that gets skipped, because it happens weeks after the emotional work of deciding who gets what is over and the invoice has been paid. Ask your firm whether the fee includes preparing and recording the new deed, or whether that is yours to do. Both answers are normal. Only one of them is free.
The value of the pot the trust will hold. This box does nothing at all unless the trustee below charges a percentage, which is the point.
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Notice what this input is and is not connected to. It does not touch the drafting fee, because writing the document takes the same afternoon whether the house is worth two hundred thousand or two million. It does not touch the recording fee, because the county charges for the deed rather than for what the deed is worth. It drives one line only: a trustee quoting a percentage. That is the whole asymmetry the page is built on. Two of your costs are priced by the work and one is priced by the pot, so as the pot grows the arithmetic tilts further toward the line nobody was shopping for.
What a professional trustee charges each year to administer the trust, as a percentage of what it holds. Put ZERO if a family member is serving without a fee, which is an ordinary arrangement and changes this page's answer completely.
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The box that decides this page, and the one to think hardest about. A percentage fee is not a bill for a service in the way the drafting fee is: it is struck against the assets, so it goes up when the market does, without any more work being done for you. It also recurs, which the drafting fee does not, so the gap between the two widens every year the trust runs. Ask a corporate trustee for the rate, the minimum annual fee, and whether investment management is inside that rate or billed beside it, because the minimum is what actually governs a small trust and it is rarely the number on the front of the brochure. And then ask the other question honestly: whether you need a professional at all. A competent, willing, organised relative serving for nothing is a real option, it is what a great many family trusts do, and it makes this line zero. The cost of that choice is not money, it is that you have handed a job with real liability to somebody who did not train for it and cannot resign easily. Price both and decide with the numbers in front of you.
The accountant, the trust's own tax return where one is required, the record-keeping. Ours is a placeholder. This can be close to zero for a simple revocable trust while you are alive.
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The line that depends on which kind of trust you signed, and it is worth knowing which you did. A revocable living trust is usually invisible to the tax system while you are alive: it uses your own tax number and its income goes on your own return, so this line is small or nothing. An irrevocable trust is generally its own taxpayer with its own return to file, which means somebody prepares it every year, and that somebody charges. This is a fair question for the attorney drafting the thing, and it is better asked before you sign than discovered the following April: ask whether the trust you are being sold files its own return, and if so, roughly what your accountant will want for it. Put their answer in this box rather than ours.
How long the trust will exist before it distributes and closes. The default is ours and it is a starting point rather than a claim about trusts.
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The multiplier on every recurring line, and the input people leave at whatever we put there, which is a shame because it is doing a lot of the work. It is not a guess about your health. It is a question about the instructions in the document, and they are the thing you control. A trust that hands everything over as soon as the estate settles runs for a year or two. A trust that holds a pot for a nine-year-old until they are twenty-five runs for sixteen, and every year of that is another year of the trustee's percentage against a pot that is hopefully growing. That is not an argument against staggering a distribution, which is usually a good idea for excellent reasons that have nothing to do with fees. It is an argument for knowing the price of the instruction while you are still writing it, because this is the moment it is free to change.
Estimated cost
$36,300

Typical range $26,700 – $49,100

  • Drafting the trust (one-time)$2,000
  • Retitling and recording (one-time)$300
  • Trustee's fee (pot × rate × years)$30,000
  • Tax return and admin (per year × years)$4,000
  • Total$36,300
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$10,000 to $60,000 across the term is what a percentage fee against a real pot over a decade comes to, and the recurring lines are now carrying the total rather than the setup. Read the breakdown rather than the total: if the trustee's line is most of it, the conversation to have is about the rate, the minimum annual fee and whether a relative could serve instead. That conversation is worth more than any discount on the drafting.

What this assumes, and where it could be wrong

Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.

THE DRAFTING FEE IS BOUGHT ONCE. THE TRUSTEE'S PERCENTAGE IS BOUGHT EVERY YEAR, AGAINST THE POT.
This is the page. The question is what it costs to open a trust, and opening it is the part that ends: the attorney writes the document, the deed gets recorded, the invoice is paid, and those lines never return. A trustee quoting a percentage of the assets returns every year the trust exists, and the fee is struck against the size of the pot rather than against the work of looking after it, so it also rises with the investments while the work stays the same. Two costs priced by the hour and one priced by the pile, compounding across a term you chose when you wrote the instructions. On our own placeholder defaults the setup is $2,300 and the ten-year cost is $36,300, which puts the number a reader came here to find at 6 percent of the number they actually wanted. Nothing is being concealed by anybody: the opening quote is answering a narrower question than it looks like it is answering, and the firm quoting it was asked about opening the trust.
A family trustee makes this page say the opposite, and that is not a flaw in the page.
Set the trustee rate to zero and our own defaults report a ten-year cost of $6,300 with the setup at 37 percent of it. That is a real arrangement rather than a hypothetical: a great many family trusts are run by a relative who charges nothing, and for a straightforward pot going to people who get on with each other it can be exactly right. So the page is not claiming trusts are expensive, and it is not steering you toward a corporate trustee or away from one. It is claiming that the trustee line decides the answer and the drafting fee does not, and that stays true whichever way you fill the box. What a family trustee costs is not on this ledger, because it is not money: it is a real job with real duties, filing, accounting and even-handedness between beneficiaries who may want different things, landing on somebody who did not train for it and cannot resign gracefully once the person who asked them is gone. Price the professional here, then weigh that against it honestly rather than by default.
The retitling line is a minor number on the ledger and it decides whether the document works.
A trust governs the assets that have been retitled into its name, and it reaches no further than that. If the deed to the house still reads your own name, the house is not in the trust however clearly the trust describes it, and it will go through probate exactly as though you had never signed anything. Attorneys call this funding the trust and it is the step that gets skipped, for an understandable reason: it happens weeks after the hard part is over, the decisions are made and the invoice is paid, and it feels like paperwork rather than like the point. It is the point. Ask your firm plainly whether the fee includes preparing and recording the new deed and handling the bank and brokerage retitling, or whether they hand you a list and you do it. Both are normal arrangements. Only one of them is included, and the one that is not is the reason a family sometimes discovers, at a moment when they have no appetite for discovering anything, that they paid for a trust and got a document.

The band under the total is ours and it is a sensitivity band rather than a survey of firms. It flexes the two lines you are still shopping, the drafting fee and the trustee's rate, by our own margin either side, and it holds the pot and the term exactly where you put them, because those are yours and there is nothing uncertain about them. It is showing you how much of the estimate is exposed to a quote you have not settled yet, which is a different thing from a claim about what a trust costs in your state. We have not surveyed that and this page does not publish it, and a range drawn any other way would be a fabrication.

The defaults are ours and every one of them is a placeholder, so replace them before you trust the total. The drafting fee, the recording cost, the trustee's rate and the admin are all quotes from people you have not rung yet, and the pot and the term are facts about you rather than about trusts. The two that move the answer furthest are the trustee's rate and the years, and they are the two people leave alone. This page is not legal or tax advice and we do not know your state, whether you need a trust at all, or whether the one you are being sold is the right instrument. It prices the arrangement you describe to it. Whether to sign is a conversation with somebody who knows your situation, and the arithmetic is here so that you arrive at it able to ask what the second decade costs.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to open a trust fund?
It depends on your attorney's quote and on how complicated your instructions are, which is why this page asks for the figures rather than printing one that would fit nobody. But the more useful answer is that opening it is the wrong thing to price. There are four lines, and only two of them are the opening. The drafting fee is what the attorney charges to write the document, and it is paid once. The retitling is what it costs to move the assets in, and it is paid once. Then the trust runs: a professional trustee usually charges a percentage of the assets every single year, and there may be a tax return to file every year with it. On our own placeholder defaults the opening is $2,300 and the first ten years come to $36,300, so the figure most people are searching for is about 6 percent of what they are buying. Put your own numbers in the form above and the ledger separates what you pay once from what you pay for as long as the trust exists.
Why does the trustee's fee matter more than the drafting fee?
Because it recurs and it is not priced by the work. The drafting fee is a bill for an afternoon of an attorney's time and it is the same whether your house is worth two hundred thousand or two million. A trustee's fee is usually quoted as a percentage of the assets, which means two things at once. It comes back every year the trust runs, so a sixteen-year trust for a young beneficiary buys it sixteen times. And it is struck against the pot rather than against the hours, so when the investments do well the fee goes up without anybody doing more work for you. Multiply a percentage by a large pot by a long term and you get a number that dwarfs the quote you were comparing between two firms. On our defaults it is $30,000 of the $36,300. Change the rate box to zero and the same page reports $6,300, which tells you exactly where the money is.
Do I need a professional trustee, or can a family member do it?
A relative can serve, a great many family trusts are run that way, and for a simple pot going to beneficiaries who get on with each other it can be the right answer. It makes the largest line on this ledger zero, which is why the rate is a box you fill rather than a number we chose. But the cost of that choice is real and it is not money. A trustee has duties: keeping the assets separate, keeping records, filing what has to be filed, investing sensibly, and being even-handed between beneficiaries who may want different things at the same time. That job lands on somebody who did not train for it, carries personal liability if they get it wrong, and is awkward to resign from once the person who asked them is no longer there to be asked why. A professional charges a percentage and in exchange brings the training, the insurance and the indifference. Neither is the right answer in general. Price the professional above, set the rate to zero to see the other arrangement, and weigh the two with the numbers in front of you.
What should I ask before I sign a trust?
Five things, and they all turn a flat quote into a number you can compare. Does the fee include preparing and recording the deed and retitling the bank and brokerage accounts, or is that a separate bill, since that is the step that decides whether the trust governs anything at all. Does the trust file its own tax return every year, because that is an accountant's fee for the life of it. If you are naming a corporate trustee, what is the rate, what is the minimum annual fee, and is investment management inside the rate or beside it, since the minimum is what actually governs a smaller trust. How long do the instructions keep the trust open, because every year is another year of the recurring lines. And what does it cost to change the thing later, if it is a trust that can be changed at all. Put each answer into the form above and compare the whole term rather than the opening fee.

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