What a Blended Family Plan Costs in Georgia
A complete trust plan at Atlanta Estate Planning is $3,500. That price is the same for a first marriage and for a blended family. You are not charged more because your family has more people in it.
The flat fee covers a revocable living trust, a pour-over will, a financial power of attorney, an advance healthcare directive, a HIPAA release, and one Georgia property deeded into the trust. The same figure is broken out on our page for what a revocable living trust costs in Georgia.
A will by itself costs less. A will-only plan is $1,800 for one person and $2,200 for a married couple. A will can name a guardian for your minor kids, which matters a great deal in a blended family. What a will cannot do is keep your estate out of probate court. See how much a will costs in Georgia for the side by side comparison.
What actually raises a blended family’s price is not the family. It is the property. A second home, an out of state condo, or a rental LLC each add a set fee. Those numbers are listed further down this page.
Online will kits cost far less than any law firm. They also assume one family, one set of kids, and one obvious answer about who gets what. A blended family breaks all three of those assumptions. A template cannot hold a share for your kids and support your spouse at the same time. It cannot stop a new spouse from redirecting that share later either. That is the gap you are paying a firm to close.
Why a Blended Family Plan Is Built Differently
A plan for a first marriage usually rests on one assumption. Everything goes to your spouse, and later to the kids you share. That assumption is what makes those plans simple.
A blended family breaks the assumption. Your spouse may have kids you did not have together. You may have kids your spouse never adopted. If everything passes to your spouse outright, your spouse decides what happens to it next, not you. Your spouse can write a new will, remarry, or spend it down.
A trust is what fixes that. It can hold a share for your kids from an earlier relationship and still support your spouse for life. The trust says who gets what, when they get it, and who is in charge of it. Read how a revocable living trust works in Georgia if you have never set one up.
There is a name for the setup that supports your spouse for life and still saves a share for your kids. Lawyers call it a QTIP trust, short for qualified terminable interest property. Your spouse gets the income from that share for as long as they live. When your spouse dies, what is left goes to the children you named, and your spouse cannot change that list. Setting one up is included in the flat fee. It does not cost extra.
Your child’s share can also be written to stay safe if that child later divorces or runs up debt. Lawyers call that a spendthrift clause. It is part of the same flat fee.
Someone has to be in charge of the trust after you die. That person is the trustee, and in a blended family the choice matters more than most people expect. Naming your spouse as trustee over your kids’ share puts your spouse in charge of money your kids are waiting on. Naming one of your kids does the same thing in reverse. Many blended families pick a neutral third person, or a bank, to hold that role instead. Melissa walks through the options with you, and the choice does not change your price.
Naming a stepchild is a separate step, and nothing about it is automatic. Georgia treats a stepchild you never adopted as a stranger to your estate. For the wider planning picture, see our guide to estate planning for blended families in Georgia.
What a Stepchild Inherits With No Will or Trust
Georgia decides who inherits when you die with no will and no trust. The rule is called intestate succession, and it lives in O.C.G.A. § 53-2-1. It lists a surviving spouse and children. It does not list stepchildren.
Under that rule your spouse shares equally with your children, and your spouse’s share is never less than one third. The word children means your biological children and any child you legally adopted.
A stepchild you never adopted inherits nothing. It does not matter that you raised them from the age of four. It does not matter that they call you Dad. The only way a stepchild receives a share is if your will or your trust names them.
Say you live in Decatur. You have two kids from your first marriage. Your wife has a son you never adopted. You die with no plan, and your wife and your two kids split your estate under state law. Her son receives nothing from you.
How Georgia’s Year’s Support Law Can Shrink Your Kids’ Share
A surviving spouse in Georgia has a right most families have never heard of. Under O.C.G.A. § 53-3-1 they can petition the probate court for Year’s Support. It is estate property set aside for the family’s support and upkeep for the 12 months after a death.
Here is the part that catches families off guard. Year’s Support is paid ahead of other debts and ahead of the gifts written in the will. The statute puts it near the front of the line. There is no set dollar amount either. A probate judge decides the number based on what the family was used to living on.
In a first marriage nobody notices, because everyone inherits from the same two people. A blended family is where it bites. Once that award is granted, the money set aside for your kids from an earlier relationship can shrink, or arrive years late, even when your will promised those kids a set share.
There is a second wrinkle most people never hear about. The statute lets a spouse and the parent’s minor children ask for Year’s Support, and it defines those children as minors who would inherit if you died with no will. A stepchild you never adopted is not on that list either. So a stepchild cannot ask the court for support, and your own kids can still end up with less than you planned.
A funded trust plans around all of this. It sets your kids’ share aside up front instead of routing everything through your spouse and the probate court.
Why You Still Need a Will Even If You Have a Trust
If you have minor kids from an earlier relationship, and your current spouse is not their legal parent, a will does one job nothing else can do. Georgia law says only a parent, by will, can name a guardian for a minor child (O.C.G.A. § 29-2-4). A trust cannot name a guardian. A signed letter cannot. A text message to your sister cannot.
There is a real limit on that nomination, and blended families need to know it. The person you name only takes over if your child has no other living parent. If your ex is alive and still has parental rights, your ex becomes your child’s guardian, whatever your will says. Your spouse raising that child for ten years does not change it, unless your spouse legally adopted them.
So the will is not there to beat your ex. It is there for the case where no other parent is left. Without it, a judge picks the guardian from a list set by state law, not from your list. Our page on what happens to your minor children if you die without a will in Georgia walks through how that court process actually runs.
Every plan at Atlanta Estate Planning includes a will, at both price points. Read more about how a Georgia last will and testament works.
What Pushes the Price Higher
The base fee covers one Georgia property. A few common things add to it, and each one has a set price.
- Another Georgia property. Each extra Georgia property moved into your trust costs $550. See what it costs to transfer property into a trust in Georgia.
- Property in another state. A lake house in Tennessee or a condo in Florida costs $1,100, because a second state means a second deed and a second set of recording rules.
- A rental or business LLC. Forming an LLC and tying it to your trust costs $1,250. See how much an LLC costs in Georgia.
- A prenup or postnup. If you signed one, it has to line up with your estate plan. Melissa reads both documents together during your Design Meeting, and there is no added fee for that review.
Nothing on that list shows up later as a surprise. You get an exact total before any drafting starts.
What It Costs to Wait
With no plan in place, the court takes over. Your estate lands in Georgia probate, which is public, court run, and slower than most families expect.
- Cost. Attorney and court fees on a simple Georgia estate come to $14,700 on average.
- Timeline. A simple estate takes about 13 months to close, and a business or complex estate averages 25 months.
- Control. Your family cannot reach most of the money until the case ends, and a stepchild you never adopted still receives nothing unless a will or trust named them.
A complex estate runs higher. Those average $29,700 in fees. Our page on how much probate costs in Georgia breaks those fees down line by line.
The average simple probate bill is more than four times what a full trust plan costs, and it comes with no promise that your stepchildren receive anything at all.
How to Get Started
You do not need your family sorted out before you call. Most people work that out once they say it out loud to someone.
Your first call is free, about 15 minutes, and happens by phone with Shawn. If you move forward, your next step is the Design Meeting with Melissa, which is credited toward your plan.
Families change, and plans have to keep up. A new marriage, a new stepchild, or an adoption is a good reason to have your plan looked at. Melissa will tell you then whether a small change or a full rewrite costs less.
Melissa goes through your family, your assets, and any papers you already signed. You get an exact price before you commit to anything. Every flat fee is listed in one place on our Georgia estate planning pricing page. Have young kids at home too? Our page on what estate planning costs for a family with minor children covers the guardian side in more depth.
