No. A will does not keep your estate out of probate. A will goes directly through probate. This is exactly what a will is designed to do.

More on what a will actually does

A will is an instruction to a court. It tells the court who gets your property, who is responsible for settling your estate, and who should raise your minor children if you cannot. When you die, your executor files the will with the probate court. The court opens a case, appoints the people you named, and supervises the process until the estate is closed.

That process is public record. Anyone can look up what you owned, what you owed, and who got what. It takes time. A straightforward estate in Missouri can take six months to a year. A contested one takes longer. It costs money. Executor fees, court costs, and attorney fees all come out of the estate before the beneficiaries receive anything.

None of that is avoidable with a will. The bottom line – a will requires probate to function.

Ok, so what actually avoids probate?

Some assets never go through probate at all, regardless of what your will says. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death bank accounts transfer directly to the named beneficiary. Joint tenancy property passes to the surviving owner. These assets skip probate entirely because they do not pass through your estate. Your will has no authority over them.

For everything else, one tool to use is a trust. When your assets are held in a trust, there is nothing in your individual name to probate. The trustee distributes the assets according to the trust terms after your death, without a court filing, without a judge, and without a public record. Your family handles it privately.

The will still has a role

If you have a trust, you do not abandon the will. You sign what is called a pour-over will. It catches anything that was not transferred into the trust during your lifetime and directs it there at death. It still goes through probate for those assets, which is one more reason to keep your trust funded. But the pour-over will serves as a backstop so nothing falls entirely outside the plan… So, if your attorney neglects seeing your house into your trust, hopefully he or she didn’t neglect the pour-over will, which may save your estate from an unintended distribution.

What to do with this

If you have a will and you believe probate is not in your future, revisit that assumption. A will is a starting point. It names people, establishes intent, and provides direction to a court. It does not protect your estate from that court.

If avoiding probate matters to you, talk to an estate planning attorney about a trust. And if you already have a trust, make sure your assets are in it. A trust that has never been funded does not avoid anything – regardless of how much money you spent on it.

If you have a question about your estate plan, please feel free to schedule a free consultation through the link below!