When to form an LLC and/or Family Trust

[Carnet Williams]

Greetings. There's been a ton of discussion around when to form a LLC. I would love to solicit your advice as I'm guessing many of you have gone through the same thought process. A bit of background info:

1) My wife and I after 30 years of working have a healthy stock portfolio. Enough that we want to make sure that this asset class is protected from any potential liability that may come out of our REI

2) We currently have a primary residence (in CA) and five rental properties (1 CA, 3 Minn, 1 MO). We plan on aggressively purchasing more in the next 3 years by allocating by liquidating some of our stock portfolio to REI

3) We have an old trust, and thinking about creating a new one so we can include our new properties

So the questions are:

1) When is a good time to think about putting our properties in a LLC as a way to shield our other assets. I know we need to very strictly keep all rev/expenses in the LLC (e.g. separate bank accounts, etc) and then also quick deed title to the LLC. The loans are still in our names, so not sure how much exposure that gives us. Also should we create a separate LLC for each state that we own property? Should the LLC be in the same state as the property?

2) As for our family trust. Is it ok to create a single revocable trust or should we be looking at creating two trusts? A revocable for our non property assets and an irrevocable for our REI? I read that an irrevocable trust doesn't allow liability to crawl out of the trust to other assets.

I realize these are definitely advanced questions that a lawyer/CPA should be answering, but they all seem to have different opinions. I'm interested in what you all have done as practical real life suggestions/advice.

Thanks!