As for funding the trust, that depends on the nature and extent of your assets. For example, with real estate I often see attorneys do it with a quit claim deed. I don’t feel comfortable with that I think it should be at least a special warranty deed because there’s certain warranties that should pass along with chain of title so you can retitle real estate in the name of the trust. Stocks and bonds, usually it’s a brokerage account, which makes it a lot easier and you just retitle the brokerage account in the name of the trust. Life insurance you’ve got designated beneficiaries. So you’ve got a primary beneficiary and a contingent beneficiary. So typically, we’ll name the trust as a primary beneficiary. Now, with qualified retirement benefits and IRAs it’s much trickier and there are numerous tax considerations so you’ve got to be careful about the designated beneficiaries. Annuities, the same way, you generally have designated beneficiaries.

The challenge it really comes with a lot of clients that we have closely held business interests. So do they have a corporation? Do they have a partnership? Do they have limited liability company? And we need to look at your records, make sure the records are up to date, and transfer the equity interest into your trust in order to avoid probate with respect to these type of assets.