Q: My husband and I are in our mid-70s. I am trying to get our affairs in order so our sons will not have trouble when we do pass away. I have done two things as suggested by my retired attorney brother. First, we have gone through all of our accounts (banks, investing accounts, retirement plans and Treasury Direct account). We checked each account and set up a primary beneficiary and also contingent beneficiaries.

We are also in the process of doing a transfer on death instrument (TOD) on our house, naming our three kids as the owners once we die. My brother suggested that we go the TOD route with our home and set up primary and contingent beneficiaries on our accounts. He thought this would be simple and didn’t think we needed to set up a living trust. The end result would be the same, he said.

Our home is worth around $1 million and our accounts contain approximately $3.5 million. Do you think we should consider setting up a trust, or are we OK with what we have done?

A: You’ve got a significant estate, and you’ve taken some savvy steps to make sure your affairs are in order. But we find ourselves conflicted over which way you should go from here. In the short term, we think your brother is right that if you and your husband were to die today, your home and other assets would flow to your kids. On the other hand, you don’t want to mess up a $4.5 million estate.

Under existing federal estate tax laws you and your husband appear to be well below the threshold where the IRS would expect an estate tax from you. When it comes to a state tax return, it depends on where you live. In states without an estate tax, you wouldn’t need to file anything. In a state like Illinois, you may need to file a return but not owe anything. In other states, there would be an estate tax return and also a tax bill to be paid.

The real question is whether you can avoid probate court with what you’ve done. Here are questions we think you should consider:

You have three kids, what happens if one of your children dies before you do? If you don’t change anything, your other two kids will get all that you own. Is that what you intend? Or, would you want your deceased child’s wife and your grandkids to get their share? One additional item to consider is whether one child will need more money than the others because of circumstances or the industry in which they work. Would any of your children need additional funds to care for disabled children or have special needs or whether you want to have funds only used for educational or health purposes?

There are a number of milestone life changes that can occur at any time that you can’t control with a beneficiary designation in your accounts and even less through the use of a TOD. The document states that upon your death, you designate one or more people to become owners of your property.

When and if you decide to make changes, you have to record or file a new TOD and indicate that your prior TOD is no longer valid and should be replaced by the new TOD. In some municipalities, you might have to pay a transfer tax or municipal fee to record the document.

Compare that with a well-prepared trust document that contemplates how to distribute your assets with as many variables as you might want. Say you want to provide for your great-grandchildren’s educational expenses or to provide for a family fund to pay for the well-being of either your kids, grandkids or great-grandkids. You can’t do that with a designation on an account, nor can you do that with a TOD. But it would be easy to do with a trust.

This is all food for thought. You have to decide how simple or complicated you want to make your life. Once you consider all of these questions, then you can decide whether you want to talk to an estate planning attorney to set up a trust or take the path recommended to you by your brother.

Ilyce Glink is the CEO of Best Money Moves and Samuel J. Tamkin is a real estate attorney. Contact them through the website ThinkGlink.com.