<prompt> Human: My mother-in-law died in May and she had explained her trust as supposed to automatically transfer to my wife as beneficiary, able to take out 25 anytime and the rest at 30 yo. Additionally, there is a family trust that she is now the beneficiary for half of it with the same restrictions. My wifes uncle is the executor and manages the trust.We were told by her mom that the trusts are supposed to automatically transfer on death with minimal paperwork. The profit from the trust was going to my mother-in-law every month. It is now August and we have seen none of the monthly profit checks and her uncle keeps saying there is a lot of paperwork and tax things to take care of before it is available and fully in my wifes name. He doesnt explain anything and seems like he is keeping back information. We dont want to take out anything but the monthly checks would help a lot.Does anyone know how long it takes to transfer a trust? What are our rights? Is there anything else we should know?Assistant: In general the purpose of setting up a trust is to bypass a lot of the paperwork and hassle of an estate, the beneficiaries should be named specifically and the funds should already be available.It is also true that there is a fair amount of paperwork, taxes, and hassle associated with settling an estate and it could be that the trust and estate are tied together somehow and maybe some final paperwork has to be done on the estate before the trust can start to distribute funds.Ive executed two estates for my parents and in my experience it takes 6-12 months to completely settle an estate. It is a big hassle and usually a thankless task since the executor doesnt generally get paid but has to put in a lot of time and effort and is usually the lightning rod for any problems or disputes. My cousin settled our uncles estate and it took about 18 months and now 3 of our cousins are no longer speaking to her because of perceived slights from her handling of the estate. Meanwhile I think she settled everything fairly and the county agreed.My advice would be to politely ask the uncle when he thinks the trust will be settled and if there is anything you can do to help. Once settled youll probably be part of the trust for the rest of your lives so you dont need to be in a hurry about it. It is after all found money.Human: There was no estate. All property and accounts were part of her trust so there shouldnt be anything to settle. i guess I will wait to see what happens. He said he has to get everything done by the end of the year so I guess we will see in a couple of months.  <response>: Well this is a question for the trustee your uncle. Its impossible to say how complex this is but there are always unexpected problems. It could be that he is dragging his feet or does not understand what hes doing, it could also be that he is overwhelmed and is just trying to deal with all of the problems.Just as an example, my father set up a trust for me and my brothers and put all of his assets into it, for exactly the reasons were talking about, so it would be transferred easily to the beneficiaries without going through probate or the county.Well he owned a small company and never quite got around to transferring the stock for that company into the trust. So guess what, an estate was created for this when he died. Oh and he had a house that he was building, and he was going to put that into the trust once it was done, but it wasnt done. So it went into his estate. And he forgot to formally transfer all of his furniture, clothes, car, and other belongings into the trust.So when I went to execute the estate, there was a bunch of relatively simple stuff cash and investment in the trust, but a bunch of really complicated stuff a small business which owed money, a partially built house, a leased car, and a bunch of used clothing and belongings that were in the estate.I could not liquidate the trust for the potential that the estate were insolvent i.e. more liabilities than assets in which case the trust would have to pay money into the estate to settle it. Settling the estate took a long time because I had to sell the partially built house, sell the company, put all of his belongings on consignment, etc. and then account for this, file a final tax return, have all of that approved by the county, etc. This took almost a year.This is is just my situation but Im trying to illustrate how, even with a trust, there could be complications and delays. 