Después de firmar su fideicomiso de California

What signing did, and what it did not do

Signing put the trust's terms in a writing. A trust of real property is valid only if it is evidenced by a writing signed by the trustee or the settlor (or an authorized agent), or by a conveyance (Prob. Code §15206); California asks for no witnesses on a trust. Unless the instrument expressly makes it irrevocable, a trust with a California connection is revocable by you (§15400), and while you can revoke it, the trustee's duties are owed to you (§15800(a)).

What signing did not do is move anything. A trust is created only if there is trust property (§15202), and it controls only the property titled in its name or payable to it. Funding — retitling property into the trust — is the step that makes the plan work.

Funding: real property

Real property moves into the trust by a deed from you to yourself (or whoever is named) as trustee, recorded in the county where the property lies. For property tax, a transfer by the trustor into a trust is not a change in ownership while the transferor is the trust's present beneficiary or the trust is revocable (Rev. & Tax. Code §62(d)) — so deeding your home into your own revocable trust does not by itself reassess it.

If you are married, the trust's terms and the transfer decide what happens to community property: community property transferred into a trust that is revocable as to it during the marriage, and modifiable only with both spouses' joinder or consent, remains community property unless the instrument or the transfer expressly provides otherwise (Fam. Code §761). Reading the deed and the trust together, before recording, is where many people involve a licensed California attorney of their choosing.

Funding: accounts, businesses, vehicles and everything else

Bank and brokerage accounts are retitled to the trustee, or given a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death designation that names the trust; read each account agreement, because institutions differ. Business interests move by assignment under the entity's own documents. Tangible personal property usually moves by a general assignment.

Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by their beneficiary designations, not by the trust, and the choice of beneficiary for a retirement account has tax consequences — a decision to make deliberately with your advisers. Whatever stays outside the trust passes by its own terms, by a pour-over will (§6300), or by intestacy.

• Real property: a recorded deed to the trustee (Rev. & Tax. Code §62(d) for the property-tax side).
• Bank and brokerage accounts: retitled to the trustee, or a POD/TOD designation naming the trust.
• Business interests: an assignment under the entity's documents.
• Tangible personal property: a general assignment.
• Retirement accounts and life insurance: beneficiary designations chosen deliberately.

The certification of trust (§18100.5)

Banks, title companies and brokerages ask for proof that the trust exists and who may act for it. California's answer is the certification of trust: an acknowledged declaration signed by all currently acting trustees, confirming the trust's existence and date, the settlors, the trustees and their powers, the revocability and who holds a power to revoke, and the other facts §18100.5 lists — without the dispositive terms. A person who relies on it without actual knowledge that it is wrong is protected, and the person may require copies of the excerpts that designate the trustee and confer the power to act.

Tell your successor trustee, and leave a map

The person you named will meet the trust at the worst possible time. At your death they serve a notification on each beneficiary and each heir within 60 days (Prob. Code §16061.7), file a change in ownership statement within 150 days for California real property in the trust (Rev. & Tax. Code §480(b)), and take control of and review the property (§§16006, 16049). Knowing that they were named, where the original is, and what the trust holds turns those months from a search into a sequence.

• Where the signed original and every amendment are kept.
• The asset list, with how each asset is titled and which account numbers belong to it.
• The advisers — the drafting attorney, the accountant, the financial adviser — and how to reach them.
• The beneficiaries' and heirs' names and addresses, which the notification will need.

Keep it current, by its own method

A revocable trust is revoked by the method the instrument provides, or by a signed writing (other than a will) delivered to the trustee during your lifetime — unless the instrument makes its own method exclusive, in which case only that method works (Prob. Code §15401(a)). Unless the instrument provides otherwise, you modify it by the same procedure (§15402). An agent under a power of attorney may not modify or revoke the trust unless the instrument expressly permits it (§15401(c)).

Where two settlors created the trust, each may revoke as to the portion that settlor contributed, unless the instrument provides otherwise, subject to the Family Code's rule for community property (§15401(b)). Life changes are the usual reasons to revisit: a marriage, a birth, a move, a sale — and a divorce, after which a revocable trust's gift to a former spouse, and a provision naming the former spouse as trustee, generally fail at your death, with the exceptions §5040(b) lists (§5040).

What happens at your death

The trust becomes irrevocable, and your successor takes up the Trust Law's duties (§16000 and following): the notification by trustee within 60 days, with the contest warning (§16061.7); each recipient's contest period from service (§16061.8); the account at least annually to the current beneficiaries (§16062); and, for California real property, the change in ownership statement within 150 days (Rev. & Tax. Code §480(b)) and the Proposition 19 question about any parent–child transfer (Cal. Const. art. XIII A, §2.1). The property you funded passes under the trust's terms without probate; what you did not fund may not.

The mistakes that follow a signing

Most problems with a revocable trust are not in the document. They are in what happened — or did not happen — after it was signed.

• The deed was never recorded, so the house is still in your individual name.
• An account was opened after signing and never titled to the trust or designated to it.
• Beneficiary designations name people the trust does not, quietly overriding the plan.
• An amendment was signed but not by the method the trust makes exclusive (§15401(a)).
• An agent under a power of attorney tried to amend a trust that does not expressly allow it (§15401(c)).
• Nobody knows where the original is, or who the successor is.

If you have not signed yet, or need a change

TrusteeClear organizes a trustee's record; for a California consumer it does not draft, review or complete a trust, a deed or a certification. A licensed California attorney of your choosing drafts and reviews those documents, and is the right call for a change to the trust, a deed of California real property, or a question about community property.