Most houses have a folder somewhere. Mine lives in the hall closet, behind the vacuum.
It holds the deed, the car titles, and one thick document my kids will need someday.
That document has an odd family tree. One of its ancestors was a bestseller written by a salesman.
Go back to 1940. Only 43.6% of American households owned their home. By 1960 the share was 61.9%.
For the first time, most families were going to leave a house behind.
The owners were the people who bought after the war. Their handoff sat on the same calendar as their mortgages.
A house left by a will goes through probate.
Probate is the court process that proves the will and moves the property to the heirs. It takes months. It happens in public. It comes with fees.
Norman Dacey saw the wave from his desk in Connecticut. He was telling clients to skip probate with a living trust.
A living trust puts your property into a trust you control while you are alive. When you die, the person you named hands it over without a court.
The Connecticut Bar Association charged him with practicing law without a license. So he wrote the whole method down and sold it to everyone.
His book came out in November 1965. The title had the word probate in it and an exclamation point after it.
By 1970 a federal appeals court put its sales at more than 750,000 copies.
Three quarters of a million households, buying their paperwork from a stranger. Open the book and the proportions tell you why.
310
Pages of fill-in forms: trusts, wills, and related papers
55
Pages of text explaining them
Almost six pages of blanks for every page of argument. You could fill it in at the kitchen table.
The fight over a book of blanks
The New York County Lawyers’ Association went to court to stop the sales. Its claim was the unauthorized practice of law, which means giving legal advice without a license.
In September 1967 a trial judge agreed. Dacey was found in criminal contempt and fined $250, or thirty days if he did not pay. The publishers and booksellers named in the case were ordered to stop selling it in New York.
The Appellate Division, the state’s middle appeals court, upheld that in October, four votes to one.
Two months later the state’s highest court reversed it. The judges adopted the lower court’s lone dissent. A book sold to the public, it said, creates no personal bond of trust between author and reader.
The forms won.
Today the living trust is routine estate work. Plenty of lawyers draft one for a flat fee. The share of Americans holding one is still small. A national survey this year put it at 14%, up from 11% a year earlier. Wills slipped to 26%.
Among boomers, 48% have no estate documents at all.
Behind those shares sits a very large handoff. Cerulli Associates projects $124 trillion will change hands through 2048. Nearly $100 trillion of it comes from boomers and older generations.
The form has a weak spot, and Dacey’s readers met it too.
A trust only covers what you actually move into it. If the deed never gets put in the trust’s name, the house can still land in probate. The paper is cheap. The follow-through is the work.
And the follow-through usually falls to one tired daughter with a shoebox of statements.
The arithmetic
Homeownership of 43.6% in 1940 and 61.9% in 1960: U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, via HUD User. Publication in November 1965, the $250 fine with thirty days on default, the injunction against the publishers and booksellers, the Appellate Division ruling of October 1967 by four votes to one, and the Court of Appeals reversal two months later on the dissent’s reasoning: New York County Lawyers’ Association v. Dacey, 28 A.D.2d 161 and 21 N.Y.2d 694 (1967), and Dacey v. New York County Lawyers’ Association, 290 F. Supp. 835 (S.D.N.Y. 1968). About 55 pages of text and about 310 pages of forms: 28 A.D.2d 161. Sales of more than 750,000 copies: Dacey v. New York County Lawyers’ Association, 423 F.2d 188 (2d Cir. 1970). The Connecticut charge: Ipse Dixit archive episode on Dacey’s 1966 recording. Trust ownership of 14% against 11% in 2025, wills at 26%, and 48% of boomers with no documents: Trust & Will 2026 Estate Planning Report, online survey of 5,000 U.S. adults, January 28 to February 5, 2026; Trust & Will sells online estate documents, so read it as an industry survey. The $124 trillion through 2048 and nearly $100 trillion from boomers and older generations: Cerulli Associates, December 5, 2024. The almost six-to-one page ratio is Boomers Trade’s own arithmetic (310 over 55).
So open the folder this week and find the deed. Look at whose name is on it. If it names the trust, the paperwork did its job. If it names only you, a salesman from 1965 still has something to teach. Next weekend, another ledger from the archive.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
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