How to Put Everything in a TRUST (Estate Planning Lawyer Explains)

Last year, a guy walked into my office holding a trust. He paid thousands of dollars for it. Thought his family was totally protected. Had a trust, a will. Everything was set up correctly. But he was wrong. And his story is way more common than you'd think. Because the truth is, setting up a trust is only half the job. If you don't actually move your assets into the trust, that trust just becomes expensive paperwork. I've been an estate planning attorney for a long, long time, and I've watched this play out too many times. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through the 6 steps to actually fund your trust the right way. Put your stuff into it. Step 1: Transfer your home. The first asset you need to put into your trust is your home, because for most families, this is the single biggest thing that you own. And then if your house isn't in your trust, when you die, your family is going to deal with probate to transfer it, which can take months, sometimes over a year, and cost thousands in legal fees. So here's how you actually do it. First, you find a copy of your current deed. You should have it with your closing documents. This is the document that proves you own your home. If you can't find it, then you can request a copy from your local land records office or your county recorder. Next, you're going to copy the property description from that deed onto a new quitclaim deed. The property description is that legal language in the middle that identifies exactly what piece of land you own, and it has to match word for word. So on that new quitclaim deed, you're changing the ownership from your individual name to the name of your trust. So, for example, instead of John Smith, it becomes something like John Smith, Trustee of the John Smith Living Trust. And once that is done, you take the new deed to the land records office and you file it. Some places call it the Register of Deeds. Some call it the County Recorder. Either way, that's where it needs to be filed. And just like that, your home is officially in the trust. Step 2, bank accounts. Now, this one trips people up because most people think that they have to move their checking and savings accounts into the trust's name, but you do not. In fact, I usually tell people to keep their checking and their savings in their own name because it just makes day-to-day life easier. You don't want to have to deal with a trust account every time that you swipe your debit card or pay a bill online. What you do instead of that is just name your trust as the primary beneficiary on those accounts. And that way, when you pass away, the money in those accounts flows directly to the trust without going through probate. I also recommend opening a trust account during your lifetime. So while your day-to-day accounts stay in your name, you have a separate account that's already titled in the name of the trust. And the reason for this is pretty simple. When you die, your trustee needs immediate access to money to be able to pay funeral expenses, medical bills, mortgage payments, all the things that do not stop just because you're gone. If everything is tied up waiting for beneficiary designations to process, then your family's gonna be stuck for a while. Having that trust account already set up means that your trustee can step right in immediately and handle things from day one and have access to some cash. Now, before I continue, if you want to see my full asset protection system, the same one that I've used to help hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of families protect everything they've built, I'm going to be running a free live workshop where I walk through the entire thing, and I'll leave a link to register below in the description. Now let's continue. Step 3, your personal property. And this is where most people get confused. What about all the stuff in your house, your furniture, your clothing, your jewelry, your collections, the artwork on the walls, the dishes in the kitchen? None of that has a title or a deed. So how do you put that stuff into the trust? The answer is something called an assignment of personal property. This is just a simple 2-page document that Essentially says, I'm transferring all my untitled personal belongings into my trust as well. That's it. One document covers everything in your house that does not have a separate ownership document. Once you sign that and keep it with your trust paperwork, all your personal property then is officially part of the trust. No itemized list, no separate paperwork for every single item. Just one document, and this step takes about 5 minutes, but skipping it means that your family will likely have to deal with all of that personal property through probate. So don't overlook it. Step 4: Vehicles and Other Titled Assets. This category covers cars, boats, golf carts, RVs, motorcycles, anything with a title. Now this one is a little bit trickier because the rules vary from state to state. In a big way. Some states allow you to use the same assignment of personal property document that we just talked about to transfer titled vehicles to your trust, whereas other states you have to actually go down to the DMV and retitle the vehicle in the trust's name. You're going to want to check your specific state's requirements before you do anything here. And honestly, this is one of those areas where it pays to talk to an estate planning attorney in your state, because guessing wrong about this can mean that your vehicles, they may end up in probate or worse, create some kind of tax issue that you weren't expecting. But the principle is the same. Anything titled in your individual name at the time of your death needs to be either retitled to the trust or formally assigned to the trust. Otherwise, it's just not protected. Step 5, business assets. If you own a business, uh, whether that's an LLC, a corporation, partnership, anything, your ownership stake in that business needs to go into the trust most of the time. For most business owners, this means assigning your membership interest or your shares to your trust. And the exact mechanism depends on what kind of entity that you have and what your operating agreement says. But the goal is the same. You want your ownership to be held by the trust, not by you personally. And here's why this matters so much. If you pass away and your business interest is not in the name of your trust, then your business is going to go through probate just like everything else. And that can mean months, over a year, that your business is sitting in legal limbo with nobody clearly authorized to make decisions or sign contracts or pay your employees. For a small business, that's often a death knell for the company. So when the business is in the trust, then your successor trustee can immediately step in, keep things running down at the business, keep folks paid, and either continue operating the business or begin to wind it down on a timeline that makes sense, not on the probate court's timeline. Step 6, retirement accounts. This is the last category and it's also the most dangerous one to mess up. Now we're talking about IRAs, 401s, pension plans, and any other type of tax-advantaged retirement account. For these accounts, you do not actually transfer ownership to the trust the way you do with everything else. What you do is you name your trust as the beneficiary, but here is where it gets complicated. The way you name your trust as a beneficiary and what kind of trust you have can have huge tax consequences for whoever inherits the money. The wrong setup can force your beneficiaries to drain the account and pay a whole lot of taxes within a few years of your death instead of being able to stretch out the distributions over a longer period of time. So before you do anything with retirement accounts, talk to your financial advisor Jerry Taylor, your estate planning attorney. And this is not— remember, this is not the place to DIY based on a YouTube video. You hear that? Even mine. The rules around retirement accounts and trusts, they're very technical, and the IRS is not forgiving. Here's the thing: funding your trust is only one piece of the puzzle, right? I mean, a complete estate plan covers a lot more than what are, you know, your assets are titled in. Things like who can make medical decisions for you if you can't do it yourself? Who has the authority to handle your finances? What happens if you move states? What happens if your family situation changes? You get one of those pieces wrong and the whole plan can fall apart, even if you nailed everything else in this video. That's why I run a free live workshop where I walk through the complete system start to finish. It's the same one hundreds of families have used to make sure that their loved ones never have to fight, never have to wait, or never have to lose a dollar in probate court. So click the first link in the description to register. And if you want to learn more about protecting your assets, then watch this video next.