Transferring Assets To Your Living Trust

If you use Living Trust planning, it is very important that all of your appropriate assets are transferred into your trust.  The process of transferring your assets from you to your trust is called "funding".  When you fund your trust, you physically change the titles of your assets from your individual name (or joint names, if married) to the trustee of your trust.  You will also change most beneficiary designations to your trustee.  The trustee is named by you in your trust, and most likely you have named yourself as trustee during your lifetime.  That means you will still have complete control over your assets, even though they are in the name of the trust.

Your living trust can only control the assets that are put into it.  Your goal in having a Living Trust is to avoid probate at death and court intervention at incapacity, so it is wise to fund your trust immediately after signing it. 

We will transfer your personal home, and you have a choice about how you want to handle funding the rest of your assets.  You can transfer the rest of the assets yourself, or you can hire us to transfer them for you.

As part of our basic living trust service, we will provide you with a list of assets that need to be transferred, instructions on how to transfer the assets, and even samples of letters to send to your financial institutions.  We will review all of this information with you, so you will understand what you need to do.  The funding process can be time consuming, depending on how many assets you have and what types of accounts they are.

We have experience doing funding, and can do it quickly and efficiently for you.  If you prefer, we will fully fund your trust by preparing all documents for your signature, contacting all investment companies at which you have assets and advising them of your desire to retitle your assets into your living trust.  You will get a written confirmation from us when all of the retitling is completed.

Some of the types of assets that you will probably want to transfer to your Living Trust are:

• Real property (home, land, other real estate)
• Bank/credit union accounts, safe deposit boxes
• Investments (CDs, stocks, mutual funds, etc.)
• Notes payable (money owed to you)
• Life Insurance (if not placed in an irrevocable trust)
• Business interests, intellectual property
• Oil and gas interests, foreign assets
• Personal untitled property (jewelry, collectibles, etc.)