Why Estate Plans Fail Adult Children
From The Death Readiness Podcast: Not your dad’s estate planning podcast by Jill Mastroianni - Estate Planning & Probate Attorney/Lawyer for Women
March 10, 2026 · 21 min · Episode 69
About this episode
Jill Mastroianni discusses the importance of funding a trust and the consequences of failing to do so for adult children.
Your parents paid thousands of dollars for a revocable trust but none of the assets were ever transferred into it. Did their estate planning attorney make a mistake? In this episode of The Death Readiness Podcast, Jill Mastroianni explains what it actually means to fund a trust, why this step is essential for the plan to work, and who is typically responsible for doing it. She also walks through a real-world example showing how failing to fund a trust can cost families hundreds of thousands of dollars in probate fees and create a huge administrative burden for adult children. More importantly, Jill highlights the hidden emotional cost when estate planning work falls on family members instead of being handled during the parent’s lifetime.
People in this episode
Host: Jill Mastroianni
Topics covered
- estate planning
- trust funding
- probate fees
- emotional cost
- family burden
Keywords
- estate plans
- revocable trust
- funding a trust
- probate costs
- family estate planning
More episodes of The Death Readiness Podcast: Not your dad’s estate planning podcast
- What You Need to Know About Estate Planning at 30 · June 2, 2026 · 18 min
- How to Prepare for Retirement Without Panic · May 26, 2026 · 38 min
- How Do You Know If Mom Can Still Sign · May 19, 2026 · 14 min
- How to Update Estate Planning After a Dementia Diagnosis · May 12, 2026 · 24 min
- How to Take Your Estate Plan Off Script · May 5, 2026 · 18 min
- Why your life insurance trust might not work · April 28, 2026 · 21 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Death Readiness Podcast: Not your dad’s estate planning podcast podcast page.