We've been meaning to do our wills for a couple of years (have a 2 yo daughter) and my wife found someone (referred by a friend) who will do revocable/living trusts, pour over wills, living wills and designations of health care surrogates, and durable powers of attorney for both me and my wife for $325. My only reservation is the fact that we don't have so much that would go in the trust. We've got ~$500K in retirement accounts and ~$400K in life insurance that would be outside of the trust. Inside the trust would just be $60K in a joint Vanguard account and our house (~$190 w/ a $100K mortgage).
Thus, it seems like the most important thing is having the correct beneficiaries on our retirement / life insurance accounts and taking care of guardianship of our daughter. The living trust seems less important.
In terms of trustees, if both my spouse and I died, my brother is the first trustee and my sister would be the alternate. They are also who we'd like as the guardians of our daughter. We trust both of them completely. They're not super financially savvy (but not bad) so I'm planning to write up some explanatory materials about the different types of holdings / accounts. Our investment strategy is quite simple, though, so it's not hard to explain.
Also, we have an EAP program at work that offers a free hour w/ a lawyer, so I was thinking that, after we got these docs made up, we could get a second opinion on them.
My specific questions:
1) Does this seem like a good plan (given our asset makeup)?
2) Is it a pain to have your primary residence in a revocable trust? (ie when it comes time to sell, claiming homestead tax exemption, etc.)
3) Is there any reason (taxes, convenience, etc.) NOT to have our Vanguard account in a trust?
If any additional info would be helpful, please don't hesitate to ask. Thanks!