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If You Have a Revocable Living Trust, Watch This Now!

Congratulations. You took some major steps toward making settling your estate easier. The Probate can be difficult, it takes longer than people want. It's expensive, a hassle, it's a court proceeding.

There's a big estate planning problem out there. The titling process is getting neglected causing families to go through probate.

However, when the revocable living trust is fully funded, the estate settlement is a beautiful thing. But your living trust is only as effective as the assets that you title into it.

Many fully funded trusts are settled without attorney involvement. The surviving spouse maintains access to assets. The surviving spouse can sell the home and buy another, and can access all financial accounts.

Even when probate is avoided, survivors are having to deal with funeral homes, death certificates, the Social Security office, the VA, financial institutions that hold IRAs, bills that keep coming in, and insurance companies if the deceased had life insurance or annuities. Then, when you add on top of that the requirement of a probate when it was unexpected, then that sometimes is that straw that broke the camel’s back – survivor’s are fragile – going through grief and stress of the loss of a loved one.

There are a few reasons that trusts don’t get funded. People forget they owned that piece of property. People thought they had beneficiaries on all accounts. People didn’t think about buying the new property in the name of their trust. People didn’t think about opening that new account in the name of their trust. People may not have known that they needed to transfer their LLC to their trust. They kept a minimal amount of shares out of the trust. They thought their attorney was going to handle getting everything in the trust, but an attorney can only transfer certain assets into your trust.

Do these three things:

(1) Share this information. Surely you know other friends and colleagues that can benefit from this information. If you are an estate planning attorney, share with your clients along with a note to contact you if they need legal help. If you are a financial advisor, share with your clients and prospective clients along with a note to contact you if they need help titling and beneficiary designations.

(2) Fund your trust. While the process isn’t difficult, it’s easy to get sidetracked or procrastinate. Just make funding your trust a priority and keep going until you’re finished. Take a look at everything you have this is titled. Determine whether assets are probate or nonprobate. Probate assets, in general, go in your trust. There are many excellent attorneys around the country willing to help. If you need a lawyer’s help, get it. While you are at it, update your beneficiary designations.

(3) Write a Comment. if this video can help one person avoid probate and make things easier for their survivors, it’s worth it. Comment with your positive comments and experiences on youtube or linkedin or wherever else you might see or hear this, so that others can and will benefit from your experience.

Now go leave a legacy! Your family will thank you for it.

This post is for informational purposes only and does not provide legal advice. Please do not act or refrain from acting based on anything you read on this site. Using this site or communicating with Rabalais Estate Planning, LLC, through this site does not form an attorney/client relationship.

Paul Rabalais
Estate Planning Attorney
www.RabalaisEstatePlanning.com
Phone: (225) 329-2450