Modern Estate Planning to Protect Your Family Without Wasting Your Time.
We combine experienced legal counsel with modern technology to make estate planning convenient, affordable, and tailored to your life.
Estate planning is not just about documents — it is about control, protection, and peace of mind.
At TrustFully, we help individuals and families create comprehensive estate plans designed to:
We use modern tools, secure digital workflows, and flexible meeting options so you can complete your plan without disrupting your life.
Experience Matters
I have been helping families protect their children since 2011. I want to help you too. Set a no-obligation, risk free consultation to give me that opportunity.
If you have minor children, estate planning is not optional.
Name Guardians
Without specifying in your will, your children will have to have someone appointed as their guardians if something happens to you.
Control inheritance age
Without an estate plan, when your children turn 18, they get access to all of their inheritance.
avoid court custody fights
If guardians aren’t named in your will, then anyone can be appointed guardian, this can lead to drawn out and expensive custody battles for your children.
Estate planning is not just for the wealthy.
You should have a plan if you:
What is included in an Estate Plan?
Revocable Living Trust
Allows assets to pass outside probate, maintains privacy, and provides incapacity management.
Last Will and Testament
Names guardians for minor children and directs asset distribution.
Financial Power of Attorney
Authorizes someone to manage finances if you become incapacitated.
Healthcare Power of Attorney
Allows you to pick who makes your healthcare decisions
Advance Directive / Living Will
Provides instructions to your doctor about end-of-life instructions
How the TrustFully process works
Strategy Session
Once you complete our family checklist, we meet at your convenience to create a plan for your family.
Plan Design
We design a customized estate plan aligned with your family’s needs.
Review & Execution
Documents are reviewed together and formally executed using Missouri’s digital estate plan signing laws.
Funding & Implementation
We guide you on titling assets into your trust.
Most estate plans fail because they aren’t funded.
This is what makes TrustFully different. Instead of giving you your estate plan, and instructions on how to fund it, we do it for you. An estimated 70% of trusts are not funded properly, meaning that even though you spent the time and the money to fund your trust, all of your assets still go through probate. This is what we pride ourselves on, and this is the difference you get with TrustFully. I am Derek Haake and I founded TrustFully to make this work, and have been helping families protect their future since 2011.
Will vs. Trust – What’s the Difference?
| Last Will & Testament | Revocable Living Trust | |
|---|---|---|
| Controls Asset Distribution | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Avoids Probate | ❌ No — must go through probate court | ✅ Yes — assets pass outside probate |
| Becomes Effective | At death only | Immediately upon creation |
| Manages Incapacity | ❌ No | ✅ Yes — successor trustee steps in |
| Privacy | ❌ Public record through probate | ✅ Private administration |
| Court Involvement | Required | Typically none |
| Time to Settle Estate | 9–18+ months common | Often can be settled within months. |
| Cost to Administer | Court fees + attorney fees | Usually lower administration costs |
| Controls Minor Children’s Inheritance | Limited — assets often at 18 | Flexible — staggered distributions |
| Names Guardians for Children | ✅ Yes | ❌ No — done in will |
| Asset Protection for Beneficiaries | Limited | Can include protections |
| Multi-State Property Planning | ❌ Requires multiple probates | ✅ Avoids ancillary probate |
| Ease of Updating | Easy | Easy while revocable |
| Upfront Planning Cost | Lower | Higher than will alone |
| Long-Term Family Convenience | Lower | Significantly higher |
Unlike traditional firms, we prioritize accessibility and efficiency, with us, you can;
Complete your intake to get started
We have created a form to help you create a comprehensive estate plan, get started now.
Meet virtually or in person
You meet with us virtually, on your schedule, from your home. Schedule a meeting now.
Sign from your own home
Missouri is one of a few states that allows for a completely online execution of estate plan documents. We can create your plan, and you can protect your family without leaving your home.
Estate Plan saved on the cloud
Using Missouri’s latest laws, your estate plan is stored on the cloud. Authorized individuals can securely access your documents when needed. You will also receive paper copies of all of your signed documents as well.
Flat-Fee Packages
You know the cost of your entire plan before you agree to it.
Wills Package
If you are on a budget, we can draft wills for you that include everything you need to protect yourself and your family, plus we work with you, and your financial institutions to make sure all of your assets have beneficiaries.
Trusts Package
Like wills, we include everything you will need to protect your family, but we add in the security, flexibility and extra protection of a revocable trust. We also help you ensure all of your assets are in the trust.
Tax Planning
We work with you to provide you with everything you need to help minimize estate taxes your estate may become subject to. We can use advanced strategies that allow you to safeguard your assets while protecting your future.
Ready to protect your family?
What our clients say
FAQ
It depends on your needs. If you do not have a taxable estate, a will is usually sufficient for most families to adequately protect their family. What really matters is how you want your estate administered. A will directs the probate court on how to administer your estate. With a will, there is court oversight, and therefore some protections if you think someone will challenge your last wishes, or that there may be a fight with your beneficiaries. Additionally, if you have a smaller estate and only a single heir, a will may be a great planning option. There is a cost for your estate going through the courts, and it is a graduated scale from 5% of your estate to 2.5% of your estate depending on your estate’s total value. A trust allows your estate to be settled outside of the courts, and gives the trustee greater control on how your assets are distributed. For example, if in 20 years from now, one of your children is on Medicaid, if your will directs they get an equal share to your other beneficiaries, then they may get kicked off of Medicaid, or a Medicaid trust would have to be created for them. They would still receive your gift, but there is a high likelihood that their gift would go to the state. If you have a trust, there are no costs to them, and your trustee can care for them while they are alive and then distribute the remainder of your gift to them to their children, or your other children. A trust lets you plan for the unexpected in the present.
It is estimated that up to 70% of trusts are unfunded, and that is the biggest difference that we offer is that we help you fund your trust, or if you choose a will, we help you make sure everything is transferred using non-probate transfers. Imagine investing thousands of dollars into creating a trust, and all of your assets still go through probate. This is what we want to make sure you DO NOT do. We also offer up-front transparent pricing, meaning that the price you agree to, is the price you pay. It doesn’t matter if we spent 10 hours or 30 hours on your estate plan. The price, is the price, what you are quoted is what you pay. We also offer completely virtual estate plans. We meet with you on your terms, from your home. Everything, including signing is done virtually thanks to laws Missouri passed in August of 2025, your entire estate plan can now be done from the comfort of your home.
Most attorneys are proud of their office. The lavish furniture, artwork, and everything else that ultimately raises the costs of your legal services. We leverage technology and modern laws to give you a comprehensive estate plan, on a budget you can afford. We also offer financing and flexible payments. We decided that everyone needs a trust, so we offer financing similar to life insurance. If you can afford life insurance at $300 or $400 per month, you should be able to pay the same amount for a trust, but instead of paying that money for the rest of your life, you have a trust in just a few months. We are flipping the legal model for your benefit.
We encourage and embrace virtual meetings. Not only do they save you time, ultimately they save you money. You can schedule a time on our calendar here, with no obligation. Just set up a time to talk, and if we can help you, that is great, if not, well, you are just out the time you logged into your computer and talked to us. Most other firms don’t offer this.
Once we have all of your information, which we can collect from our initial consultation intake form, we can have a plan to you within 48 hours. Depending on how long it takes you to review and schedule a signing, that is up to you, we can move as fast as you want, we want to be the facilitator, not the cog in the machine.
This is one of the things that we differentiate from other law firms. We do actually work with you to fund your trust. There are estimates that 70% of trusts are not funded. That is a problem in our opinion, if you take out the time and money to create a trust, we want to, and that is part of what you purchase with us, is that we ensure your trust is funded. That is the TrustFully differentiator, we take the extra step to ensure you don’t become a statistic, but get your time and money’s worth.
It is estimated that up to 70% of trusts are unfunded, meaning that despite the intent of millions of people that create trusts each year, 70% of them end up in probate. This is problematic because up to 5% of your estate, if it goes through probate, will go to the attorney, and the same percentage will go to your executor. Most people don’t realize this, and frankly most attorneys don’t explain this to their clients. They create the trust, sell it to the client and get paid. That is their focus, we are different. We want to do the job right and make sure that you don’t just buy a house of cards. Set up a free, no obligation consultation so we can protect yourself and your estate.
In Missouri, probate can take anywhere from 9 to 18 months on average, with most cases falling in the latter part of the range. The reason for this is that you have to publish notice that you opened probate, and creditors have up to six months to file a claim against the estate.
Yes, you can transfer your house to a trust, and generally this is the best thing to do if you create a trust. The only issue you may have is with your lender, and it is always best to make a call to your lender to ensure that they are comfortable (and they almost always are) with transferring the house to your trust. Failure to notify them could result in them escalating your mortgage payments, but this has never happened, but is still good to check with your lender about it beforehand.
In Missouri, both the executor and the law firm that probates your estate takes a percentage of the estate. The percentage is as follows; 5% of the first $5,000, 4% on the next $20,000, 3% on the next $75,000, 2.75% on the next $300,000, 2.5% on the next $600,000 and 2% on anything over $1 million. If you have an estate worth $1,000,000, the attorney fees and executor fees would be $26,500 for each, or a total of $53,000 of assets of your estate. This is a sizeable amount compared to the costs of setting up a trust.
If you are unable to make legal decisions, you are incapacitated. This can occur if you are injured, or if you have something like dementia. If you become unable to make your own financial decisions and you don’t have a power of attorney, then a guardian has to be appointed for you to manage any of the property in your name. This process takes time, but it also costs a substantial amount of money, usually several thousand dollars. A simple power of attorney that costs a few hundred dollars prevents the issues of a guardian. Additionally, when a court appoints a guardian, you have no control over who they ultimately appoint. If there is a fight about who should be appointed, this can take a substantial amount of time, and cost tens of thousands of dollars.
First, if you have a will and use beneficiary designations (POD / ToD), these designations will pass property outside of your estate and directly transfers your property to the designated beneficiary. This is great, and you avoid probate by properly designating beneficiaries. What this doesn’t protect against is if one of your beneficiary’s cannot inherit the property (i.e. they went on Medicaid, disability or other government programs). If this happens, then they will have to take the gift, and it will likely be whittled down to nothing, and goes to the state. If you have a trust, then the trustee can protect these assets, still provide for the beneficiary during their life, and ultimately will be able to share those assets with other heirs, instead of it going to the state.
When creating an estate plan, you would want to include every asset you have. This is all real estate, bank accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, business interests, mineral rights, oil and gas leases, even fine art. All of this needs to be considered before you have a plan in place, and appreciation of these assets needs to be considered. 1,000 acres of farmland today may be worth $5,000,000 or $10,000,000 today, but in 20 or 30 years, and it may be developable land, that could easily make your estate taxable in the future.
This is a very personal decision. Most of the time, if you are married, you will name your spouse as your trustee, power of attorney and executor. However, you need to plan for contingencies. I often recommend that people pick successors generationally. Picking brothers and sisters, or close friends is a good strategy, but what happens if you outlive them? This is why, even if you have small children, I would recommend naming them in your estate. If something happens to you while they are young, then you still have friends / family to take care of them. If something happens to you when they are older, and you outlive your siblings / friends, then your plan is already set up to take care of them.
Yes, you can change or revoke any of your documents while you are alive and competent.