I signed my trust years ago. Is my house actually in it?

Signing the trust created the container. Whether anything was put inside it is a separate question with a checkable answer.

This is the most useful question anyone with an existing plan can ask, and it has a definite answer you can go and look up.

Signing a trust does not move anything into it. Funding is the separate act of retitling what you own so that the trust is the owner. Each asset is its own piece of paper, and each one can be quietly missed without anything appearing to go wrong for twenty years.

How to check the house

Look at the vesting on the deed — the line that says who owns the property. If it reads something like Jane Ellis and Robert Ellis, Trustees of the Ellis Family Trust dated 14 March 2016, the house is in. If it still reads Jane Ellis and Robert Ellis, husband and wife as community property, it is not, whatever the trust document says.

Your county recorder holds the record. So does the title insurance file from the purchase, and so does the attorney who drafted the trust, who should be able to tell you in a phone call whether a trust transfer deed was ever recorded.

The three that go missing most often

• A house bought after the trust was signed. Nothing in the trust reaches forward to catch it. New purchase, new deed.
• A refinance. Lenders routinely require title out of the trust to close, and the deed putting it back is somebody's job afterwards. Frequently nobody's.
• Accounts with their own beneficiary designation. Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by designation and ignore the trust entirely. That is sometimes right and sometimes an accident.

Why it matters this much

An asset the trust does not own goes through probate. That is the precise thing the trust was bought to avoid, and the failure is invisible until the moment it is expensive.

Checking is an afternoon. Fixing it while you are alive is a deed. Fixing it afterwards is a court proceeding.