I can't emphasize enough how important it is to fund your trust. You may have the greatest trust in the world, but if you have not transferred your assets to it, your family will have to go through probate. And this would defeat the primary purpose of establishing your trust. We are doing a probate now, in whichc the mother created a trust, transferred her house to the trust and a few years later sold the house. She put the sale proceeds in an investment accccount, but titled the account in her name - not in the name of her trust. She died a few years later. Her family assumed that her account was in her trust. It wasn't. So they now have to take her estate through probate. This relatively simple estate is taking 9 months and over $10,000 to get through probate. If she had titled her account in her trust, rather than in her name, the account could have been transferred to her children in about one month with no probate and a minimal attorney fee.
Just because you have a trust does not mean your family will avoid probate when you die. You must make sure your trust is funded. And not just funded as of the day you sign the trust, but all the time. We recommend an annual review with your attorney to confirm your assets are always in your trust. In fact, we are developing a new system to make continual funding easy and convenient. More on this later. Your trust has to be effective at all times, not just when you set it up. |
