Congratulations! You’ve signed all your estate planning documents designed to take care of your family when they need it most. So now what?
It’s important to note that there’s a few more things to do to ensure that your estate plan will work. Here are three items that you should check off your list of to-do’s:
Step 1 – Store Your Documents Safely
When our law firm creates estate plans for our clients, we keep a digital copy for them and provide our clients with the original documents in a beautiful binder. So you may be wondering, “where should I store my original documents?”
The best place to keep your estate plan is in a fireproof and flood proof safe. We recommend that you invest in a dial combination lock safe so you don’t have to worry about losing the key. You can let your spouse and important family members know the combination to open the safe.
Some people place their estate planning binder in a ziplock bag and store it in their fridge or freezer. If you do, make sure you seal it securely so water doesn’t damage your documents.
Others keep their estate planning binders in their bank’s safe deposit box. We recommend against it because it creates legal barriers for your family if they cannot access your safe deposit box.
Wherever you decide to store your estate plan, make sure it is safe and secure but accessible by your family.
Step 2 – Tell Your Family About Your Estate Plan
Nowadays, estate planning is not about secrecy. We encourage you to tell your family that you’ve created an estate plan. You may not need to tell them all the details, but at least tell them where the documents are, who are the beneficiaries, and who will be serving as trustee of your living trust. It’s important to provide digital copies of your estate plan to your fiduciaries and advisors.
Step 3 – Fund Your Living Trust
Now that you’ve signed your revocable living trust, the next step is to “fund” it. It’s very important to fund your Living Trust. If you don’t, your family might not have access to your assets if something happens to you. They may need to go to probate court to get what you leave them. What’s worse, your assets might go to the wrong people.
So what is funding? Funding is the simple process of transferring title and ownership of your assets from your individual name to the name of your Living Trust.
As part of our representation, we’ll help you fund your trust with your real properties, personal properties and business interests. But we cannot help you fund your financial accounts because the banks require you to do it since you’re the owner. We can give you advice on how to do it, but you must do it yourself. Financial accounts include bank accounts, investment accounts, life insurance and retirement accounts.
For example, you’ll go to the bank and add the trustee of your living trust as the pay-on-death beneficiary (or transfer-on-death beneficiary), so if something happens to you, your trustee will be able to access your bank account to distribute your cash according to your living trust instructions.
Cooperate with your estate planning attorney to ensure all your assets are funded into your living trust. The general rule is, whatever is inside your living trust avoids probate, and whatever you don’t put inside your living trust must go through probate.
Schedule Your Free Consultation Today
If you need help funding your living trust, please schedule a free consultation with us today. You may have set up your own living trust and have no idea how to fund it, or your attorney may not have provided you with this assistance. At our law firm, we pride ourselves to give our clients holistic service so they can set up their estate plan the right way. We look forward to assisting your family.