My wife and I set up a will and a trust around the same time we got our term life policies. None of it felt urgent until we had kids. Then it did. A will and a trust aren't about being wealthy. They're about who decides, if you can't.
What a will actually does
A will is where you name a guardian for your kids if something happens to both parents, and where you say how you want your assets distributed. Without one, a court decides both of those things, using default rules that have nothing to do with what you'd actually want. For parents, the guardian decision alone is reason enough to have a will. It's the single most important sentence most parents never get around to writing down.
A will also names an executor, the person responsible for carrying out your wishes and handling the practical work of settling your affairs.
What a trust adds
A trust is a separate structure that holds assets and controls how and when they're distributed, and it does 2 things a will alone doesn't. First, assets in a trust generally avoid probate, the court process that otherwise reviews and approves how a will's instructions get carried out, which can be slow and public. Second, and more relevant for parents, a trust lets you control timing. Instead of a child inheriting a lump sum at 18, a trust can specify that money is released in stages, for education, then in portions at older ages, so a inheritance doesn't land all at once on someone who isn't ready to manage it.
A will says who gets what. A trust can say when, and under what conditions. For young kids, that difference matters more than it might seem.
Why this jumps up in priority once you have kids
Before kids, the absence of a will mostly means a court applies a default distribution plan to your assets, which is a real gap but not the highest-stakes version of the problem. Once you have kids, the absence of a will means a court, not you, decides who raises them if you're not there. That's the shift that makes this worth doing now rather than someday.
This is worth doing with a professional
Estate planning has real legal and tax nuance that varies by state, and gets more complex the more assets and family situations involved. A will and a trust are worth setting up with an estate attorney, not from a template you found online. The cost is small relative to what's actually being decided.
A will names who raises your kids and how your assets are distributed. A trust adds control over timing and can avoid probate. Neither requires significant wealth to be worth having. Having kids is the moment this stops being optional and starts being 1 of the most important things you can do for them.