Funding the trust

Signing the trust creates the container. Funding is the work of putting your property inside it, and it is the step most often skipped.

Funding means retitling what you own so the trust owns it. The house needs a new deed recorded with the county. Accounts need the trust named as owner. A business interest needs an assignment the operating agreement actually permits.

Each of those is a separate act with its own piece of paper, and each can be quietly missed without anything appearing to go wrong for twenty years. An asset the trust does not own goes through probate, which is the exact thing the trust was bought to avoid.