The Necessary Evils of Funding a Trust

This session covers the basics of funding and identification of issues, including providing clients with detailed funding instructions and reviewing funding instructions with the client as it relates to all assets; funding the property into the trust, including financial accounts, business interests, and real property; auditing trust-held real property to identify the refinance deed-out defect and execute the appropriate corrective instrument; corrective deeds, including how to pull current vesting from county recorders and compare record title against trust documents; and transfer tax issues.

This session addresses remedies for the improper funding of a trust. For financial accounts, the session covers the small estate affidavit. For real property, it covers the Probate Code §850 petition — including examples of when to consider an 850 petition, examples of establishing intent, standing, documents to gather, applicable case law, notice, and after the hearing — as well as the spousal property petition, used where the deed is not held in the decedent’s name, but title is held by both spouses without proper survivorship language.