How To Living Trust
How To Prepare Your Living Trust Documents To Ensure Your Property Is Transferred The Way You Want
No law specifies what kind of living trust a person must have. For that reason, there is not a standard living trust. There is an array of living trust forms including some lawyer-created ones that have lots of verbiage that serve practically no purpose in the actual world expect to produce attorney fees.
Preparing Your Living Trust – How To Get It Done Right
If you’re making up a living trust, something simple will probably suffice. Besides naming a trustee, a successor trustee and your beneficiaries, the trust documents will have provisions that govern that trust.
Recognizing and Identifying Trust Property
One such provision is to recognize the trust property. This is typically done by naming the property on one or more schedules. Identify every property item with perfect clarity so successors and beneficiaries know what it is you’re talking about. There are no legal rules that state the property must be listed in a certain format. Thus, you can list property as "All my household possessions", "All my DVDs" or "All my clothing".
Take the trust document to a notary public and sign it there in front of them. Trusts do not need witnesses unlike a will.
Transfer Of Property Into A Trust
When you’re transferring a title into a trust, there are two kinds of property:
- Property With No Possession Documents
- Property With Possession Documents
A Look At Property With No Possession Documents
There are many kinds of property that don’t have a title to them including household possessions, clothing, movies, computer games, electronics, etc. You can easily transfer these items to the trust just by listing them on the trust schedule. On top of that, you can use the Notice of Assignment form, which is a simple document that specifies the property listed has been transferred to a trustee’s name.
A Look At Property With Possession Document
To make sure the trust is effective, you need to ensure that the property ownership with the title documents are turned to the trust, listing yourself as the trustee. When you fail to do this, your successor trustee will not be able to transfer the property to the beneficiaries.
Properties that have title documents include:
- Real estate
- Vehicles (cars, trucks, motor homes, most boats, planes)
- Bank accounts, stock accounts, stocks
- Most bounds (U.S. government securities are counted)
- Partnerships or corporations with limited partnerships
- Mutual funds
- Money market accounts
- Safe deposit boxes
On the new title document, be sure you list the trust’s
trustee as the new owner. For instance, Jade Stacey wants to place her
vehicle into the trust. She prepares the transfer form, making sure to
list herself as the person transferring ownerships with the new owner
being Jade Stacey as the trustee for the "Jade Stacey Trust".
For more details of advices on legal matters and information, go to legalforms.name site, and you can find a lot of information such as how a living trust works that you would help you get your living trust prepared with or without estate planning lawyer.