Pour-Over Wills Explained: The Safety Net for Your Trust

If you have a revocable living trust, you may assume your will is unnecessary. In fact, the opposite is true — you still need a will. But it's a specific kind of will: a pour-over will.

A pour-over will is a companion document to your trust. Its job is to catch any assets that weren't transferred into your trust during your lifetime and direct them to 'pour over' into the trust at your death.

Why does this matter? Because people are imperfect planners. You might open a new bank account and forget to title it in the name of your trust. You might receive an inheritance or settlement that goes directly to you. Without a pour-over will, those assets would pass through intestacy — the state's default inheritance rules — or require a separate probate proceeding outside your trust.

With a pour-over will, stray assets go through a limited probate process and then flow into your trust, where they're distributed according to your carefully written trust terms. Your plan stays intact.

Important: a pour-over will still requires probate for the assets that flow through it. This is why keeping your trust properly funded is so important — the more you've transferred during your lifetime, the fewer assets need to travel through the will.

Think of a pour-over will as your safety net. Your trust does the heavy lifting. The will catches what falls through the cracks. Every trust should have one. Reach out to Fan Law Office to review your plan.