Real Estate must be titled in the name of YOUR Revocable Living Trust. If you have a revocable trust and your real property is not in the name of your Trust, then the property will most likely need to be Probated.
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- Today we're gonna talk about transferring real estate into your irrevocable living trust. Welcome to 2 Minute Tuesday where I attempt to discuss an estate planning topic in two minutes or less.
Now, before we get started, if you're enjoying these videos every Tuesday, can you please do me a huge favor? And hit the Subscribe button in the right-hand corner below and click on the bell to get alerts when we post new videos every Tuesday. I would really appreciate it. Why would you want to put your real estate into the name of your irrevocable trust?
Well, if you've gone to the trouble of creating a revocable living trust, then one of the most important things that you need to do is to fund your trust. And we have talked about funding your trust in other videos and we'll be making another one soon specifically about how to fund your trust but funding your trust simply means putting everything that you have that has a title into the name of your trust.
Now when you come to see us to do your estate planning, one of the things that we require is that we put your home and other real estate that you have into the name of the trust. So, as part of our consultation, we will try to find out every single piece of real estate that you own and then we prepare the deeds for you to sign when you sign your estate plan and we file those deeds with the county in which the property is located. The reason this is so important is because if you're real property is not in your trust, then it has to go through the probate process which is probably one of the main reasons you created a irrevocable living trust in the first place.
A few years ago, we had somebody come into our office and they needed assistance with administering their father's trust and the father had been extremely diligent in putting all of his bank accounts and other finances, everything that had a title into the name of the trust but for some reason he forgot to put his house into the name of the trust so we had to do a probate and it cost several thousands of dollars just to transfer that one piece of real estate into the trust for distribution according to his wishes with a pour over will.
So, if you own real estate whether it is your home, a rental property, or even some type of commercial property or vacant land, then you need to make sure that it's in your trust. To do that we simply draft a deed transferring it from your name into the name of your irrevocable living trust. And then we file it like I said in the Oklahoma County in which the property is located. We also need to transfer any interest that you have in real property into the name of the trust.
So, for example, maybe your parents when they passed away, they left you and your siblings, say you have two siblings, they left each of you 33% interest in a particular property. In that case, we would prepare a deed to transfer your interest in that real estate into the name of your trust.
Another really great benefit of having a irrevocable living trust involves out-of-state property. If you own property say in California, Florida or even down in Texas, and when you pass away, that property actually has to be probated in that specific state under the laws of that specific state and that means you'll not only have to hire a law firm in Oklahoma but you'll also have to hire another law firm in that other state adding to the expense of your probate.
So, if you own property in another state, we simple contact a law firm in that particular state and have them quickly draft the deed transferring your out-of-state property into the name of your trust. That way the trust owns the property and it can be easily transferred to whoever you want it to according to the terms of your trust.
We regularly get contacted by out-of-state law firms especially from California asking for assistance in transferring their client's property into their irrevocable living trust. This usually only costs a few hundred dollars as opposed to several thousands of dollars it would cost if we had to do a probate for that one piece of property.
Well, that's all for today. If you've not been able to make it to one of our live estate planning seminars and you still have questions, then please give us a call or sign up below for one of our free estate planning webinars where you can watch from the comfort of your own home. I'm not sure if I made it under the two minutes today but if you enjoy these videos, then please can you do me a favor and like it below and please hit the Subscribe button so you'll get our new videos every Tuesday. We appreciate you watching and I'll see you next time. Thanks again.