Nobody needs to do a trust. Advantages to a trust depending on circumstances:
1. no probate, which means no public filings, revealing the amount of the assets transferred.
2. smoother/quicker transfer of assets. Nothing "hung up" in probate.
3. potential tax advantages (highly dependent on your level of wealth and type of trust). See GRATs for significant evidence of this.
4. potential to put your assets beyond the reach of the state government in the event of end of life medical expenses under Medicare/Medicaid. More on this below.
So in Massachusetts, Medicare/Medicaid (I can never remember which) will cover your nursing home costs (think $10,000/month or whatever) if you are basically impoverished (the old rule was $2,000 or less in assets). If you have more than that, and need to go into a nursing home, then you will be required to spend down your assets until you reach that threshold, at which point the state starts to pay.
So it is common for older people to place the majority of their wealth in a trust as this kind of expense will break all but the most wealthy of people, effectively disinheriting their kids. If the property is in a trust, then it is not the trust res (corpus, actual assets, as opposed to income) is beyond the reach of the state and cannot be applied to these nursing home costs. In Massachusetts, however, there is a five year look-back period, allowing the state to claw back assets placed into trust less than five years prior to whatever the trigger date is (institutionalization, or the date Medicaid started to cover the cost, or whatever).
All this gets tricky/sophisticated, but if you care about preserving your assets in an end-of-life situation where a nursing home can easily eat five figures per month of your life savings, then you should have this in mind.
30 seconds of research suggests this might be a worthwhile website for you to review:
https://www.elderlawcolorado.com/Con...ervation.shtml
See also:
https://www.seniorplanning.org/long-...lity/colorado/
Oh, and good advice:
tell your wife to forget about useless life insurance and think about long term care insurance and/or disability insurance
The path to poverty for the upper middle class/lower upper class is disability/invalidity/serious health issues. It stunts or eliminates income while driving costs through the roof for potentially protracted periods of time.