I’ve received multiple inquiries on this very issue over the past few days: My parents have a trust. And I just realized that their home is not in their trust.
Generally, if a grant deed was not prepared and recorded to transfer title of the home into the Living Trust — it is not in [...]
Estate Planning, Southern California Attorney
Category Archives: Transferring Assets
Reviewing An Aging Parent’s Trust & It Is Not Funded?
Placing Your Home Into Your Living Trust.
There are many approaches to transferring your home into your Living Trust. Remember, your home is most likely to be your largest asset. If your home is not IN your Living Trust, your Living Trust is useless with respect to your home.
A Living Trust is a private document that allows for the private management of [...]
Preliminary Change of Ownership Reports — a Necessary Evil.
In California, every deed or property conveyance that is recorded with the county recorder’s office should have a
Putting Stocks in Beneficiary Form.
Ever wonder what to do with your stocks? Some people are meticulous in ensuring that every asset they own will avoid probate. It’s easy to name a beneficiary for stocks in the event of your death.
Almost
every state has adopted a law (the Uniform Transfer-on-Death Securities
Registration Act) that permit clients to name someone to inherit [...]
Your Home Must Be Titled Into Your Trust.
I spend a considerable amount of time educating clients on ensuring that their home is titled into their Living Trust.
First, let’s understand that if a titled asset is NOT in your Living Trust then your Living Trust is useless with respect to that asset. For most people, your home is the largest titled asset [...]
Transferring Ownership of a Decedent’s Vehicle.
Someone dies. He or she had a car. A car nice enough to keep. You are the only heir. The estate doesn’t need probate for whatever reason.
First, determine if there is an existing note on the car. If there is a note, you will want to continue to keep paying the note until you can [...]
Your Safe Deposit Box as a Trust Asset.
If you have a safe deposit box, be sure to have a plan in place for a loved one to access the box if you pass away or become incapacitated. Every bank has their own rules (or so it seems).
Some banks will allow you to appoint an authorized user or joint renter of the box. [...]
Timeshares and Vacation Properties Should Be Taken Into Consideration.
Stan Rule, an estate planning attorney in Canada, writes a very timely post about including your vacation properties as part of your estate planning. The laws he writes about are Canadian laws so be careful when reading his post.
His analysis on holding title in joint tenancy pretty much applies in California and his point [...]
Retired? Convert Your 401k to an IRA.
Yesterday, I wrote briefly about the pitfalls of handling an inherited IRA. One useful tidbit of information as it relates to 401k and 403b retirement plans is that if you are retired, you should consider converting your existing 401k and 403b plans into a rollover IRA. This is because many companies have restricted options for [...]
Inheriting an IRA?
If you have inherited an IRA, be sure to seek professional help before managing this asset. First, IRAs are full of rules, tricks and loopholes bound to get you in trouble. If you make a wrong turn in handling an inherited IRA, you may pay through the nose with tax penalties.
If you inherited an [...]
