Після підписання вашого трасту у Техасі

What signing did, and what it did not do

Under the Texas Trust Code a trust can be created by a declaration that you hold property as trustee for another, by a transfer to a trustee during life or at death, by an appointment, or by a promise (§112.001) — and it exists only if you manifested the intention to create one (§112.002). A revocable living trust is almost always the first kind: you declare yourself trustee of the property you place in it, name the people who take after you, and keep the power to change your mind.

The signature did two things. It supplied the written evidence the statute of frauds demands — a trust in real or personal property is enforceable only on written terms bearing the signature of the settlor or the settlor's authorized agent (§112.004) — and it fixed the terms the successor will one day administer. Texas asks for no witnesses and no notary on the trust instrument itself; a notary's acknowledgment matters later, when a deed into the trust is recorded.

It did not move anything. A trust cannot be created unless there is trust property (§112.005), and the instrument governs only what is actually transferred to it or made payable to it. Most instruments recite a nominal funding on the signing day and an attached schedule of assets; the schedule is a list of intentions, not a conveyance. Every item on it still has to be deeded, retitled or designated.

Funding: real estate

Land moves by deed. You sign a deed from yourself to yourself as trustee (or to the named trustee), acknowledged before a notary, and record it in the real property records of the county where the land lies. Until the deed is recorded, the house is yours individually, and at your death it passes under your will through probate — not under the trust.

Texas protects the homestead through the trust when the trust qualifies. A qualifying trust — one in which the settlor or a beneficiary keeps the right to revoke, a general power of appointment, or the right to occupy the residence rent-free as a principal residence — keeps the homestead's exemption from forced sale (Prop. Code §41.0021), and the residence homestead tax exemption continues for property owned through a beneficial interest in a qualifying trust (Tax Code §11.13). The appraisal district will want the trust's qualifying language, so keep the instrument and the deed together.

Two things the deed does not change: the surviving spouse's constitutional right to occupy the homestead (Tex. Const. art. XVI, §52), and a mortgage. A transfer of a residence into a revocable trust in which the borrower stays a beneficiary and occupant is generally not a sale the lender may call, but the lender's own notice requirements and the title company's trustee endorsement are worth a call before the deed is recorded.

• Record the deed in the county where the land lies; a trust is not filed anywhere in Texas, so the recorded deed is the public evidence of who holds title.
• Keep the homestead qualifying: the right to revoke or to occupy rent-free must appear in the instrument, the deed or a binding agreement (§41.0021).
• Mineral interests, ranch land and a second home move by the same deed; an out-of-state parcel moves under that state's law, usually by a deed prepared there.

Funding: accounts, businesses, vehicles and everything else

Bank and brokerage accounts are retitled by the institution's own form, or left in your name with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death designation to the trustee. Texas gives multiple-party accounts their own rules: sums in a joint account belong to the survivor only if a written agreement signed by the party who died makes the interest survive (Est. Code §113.151), and a survivorship or POD designation on the account contract controls over the will. Read each account contract; the form the bank printed is the law of that account.

A closely held business moves by an assignment of the membership, partnership or share interest to the trustee, subject to whatever the company agreement says about transfers; a sole proprietorship moves asset by asset. Life insurance and retirement accounts are not retitled at all — they pass by beneficiary designation, and naming the trust as a beneficiary of a retirement account has income-tax consequences a licensed Texas attorney or tax advisor should walk through before the form is signed.

A vehicle can carry its own beneficiary designation on the title under Estates Code chapter 115, and real estate can pass by a transfer on death deed (Est. Code §114.051) where no trust is used for it. Those are alternatives to funding, not substitutes for the trust: an asset that names a person directly never reaches the trustee and never follows the trust's terms.

• Accounts: retitle to the trustee, or designate POD/TOD to the trust; keep the signed account agreement (Est. Code §113.151).
• Business interests: an assignment to the trustee, with the company's consent where its agreement requires one.
• Retirement accounts and life insurance: a beneficiary designation decided on purpose, with the tax consequences in view; exempt from most creditors in Texas (Prop. Code §42.0021; Ins. Code §1108.051) whoever is named.
• Tangible property: an assignment of furnishings, jewelry and collections to the trustee, or the pour-over will as the backstop (Est. Code §254.001).

The certification of trust (§114.086)

A bank, a title company or a broker is entitled to know that the trust exists and who may act for it — not to read your beneficiaries' shares. As an alternative to a copy of the instrument, the trustee may hand a person other than a beneficiary a certification of trust stating that the trust exists and when it was executed, who the settlor is, the identity and mailing address of the acting trustee, one or more of the trustee's powers or a statement that they include at least the powers of Subchapter A of chapter 113, whether the trust is revocable and who holds the power to revoke, how cotrustees sign, and the trust's taxpayer identification (§114.086).

Sign one on the day you sign the trust and keep it with the original. Institutions may still ask for their own form or for the pages of the instrument that name the trustee and grant the powers; the certification sets the floor, and a person who acts in reliance on it is protected by the section's own terms. When a successor takes over, a new certification naming the new trustee is the first document every bank will ask for.

Tell your successor trustee, and leave a map

Nothing in Texas files a trust with a court or a clerk, so the successor's first problem is finding it. Acceptance is the successor's choice: a signature on the instrument, a written acceptance, or the exercise of trust powers accepts the office (§112.009), and a person who learns of the nomination may decline. Tell the successor now that they were named, where the original is, who drafted it, and what the trust holds.

Leave a letter of instruction beside the instrument: the asset list with how each is titled, the account numbers, the advisors, the insurance policies and their beneficiaries, the location of the deed and the certification, and the passwords the law lets a fiduciary use. The successor will owe the beneficiaries an accounting that reaches back to the trust's records (§113.151), and the letter is where those records start.

• The original instrument, every amendment, the certification and the recorded deed, together, in a place the successor can reach.
• A written acceptance or declination from each named successor, so the next in line knows whether the office is open (§112.009).
• The names and addresses of the beneficiaries: the successor's duty to keep them reasonably informed starts on the first day (§111.0035).

Keep it current, by its own method

A settlor may revoke the trust unless the instrument makes it irrevocable by its express terms, and may modify or amend a revocable trust — but may not enlarge the trustee's duties without the trustee's express consent (§112.051). If the trust was created by a written instrument, a revocation, modification or amendment must be in writing (§112.051); a note in the margin, a conversation or an email does not change a Texas trust. Follow the amendment method the instrument itself sets, sign the amendment, and keep it with the original.

A divorce rewrites the trust for you. The dissolution of the marriage revokes a revocable disposition, appointment or nomination in favor of a former spouse, or a relative of the former spouse who is not your relative, in a trust instrument you signed before the divorce (§112.102), unless the instrument or a court order provides otherwise. Marriage, a birth and a move change nothing by themselves — which is why they belong on the review calendar.

Adding a cotrustee or changing the successor is an amendment like any other. Where cotrustees serve, a majority may act unless the instrument says otherwise (§113.085); decide on purpose whether two signatures are required at the bank, and say so in the certification.

What happens at your death

The trust becomes irrevocable the moment no one holds the power to revoke it, and the successor trustee administers what it holds under chapter 113: the general duty to administer in good faith according to the terms and the Code (§113.051), the prudent investor rule (§117.004), the common-law duty to keep the beneficiaries reasonably informed that the instrument cannot waive (§111.0035), and a written statement of accounts within 90 days when a beneficiary demands one (§113.151). No court filing opens a Texas trust administration and no opening notice is mandated by statute.

Whatever was never funded passes under your will. A devise to the trustee of a trust established during your lifetime is valid whatever the size of the trust's corpus (Est. Code §254.001) — the pour-over will catches the unfunded asset, carries it through probate, and delivers it to the trustee to be administered under the trust's terms. The probate can be light: an independent administration where the will asks for one (Est. Code §401.001), or a muniment of title where the estate owes no unpaid debt other than a lien on real estate (Est. Code §257.001). Light is still probate; funding is what avoids it.

A spendthrift clause in the instrument holds a beneficiary's share from the beneficiary's own creditors to the extent the subtitle allows (§112.035) — a protection that never applied to you as settlor-beneficiary, and that begins for your beneficiaries the day the trust becomes irrevocable.

The mistakes that follow a signing

Most of what goes wrong after a signing is visible in the first year, and almost all of it is a funding or a findability failure rather than a drafting one.

• The unfunded trust: a schedule of assets signed, no deed recorded, no account retitled — the whole estate goes through probate under the pour-over will.
• The lost homestead exemption: the house deeded to the trust without the qualifying language, or the appraisal district never told (§41.0021; Tax Code §11.13).
• Designations that contradict: a life-insurance beneficiary or a POD account naming one child when the trust divides everything equally.
• The unsigned amendment: wishes written on the instrument's margin or in a letter — a Texas amendment of a written trust is in writing and signed (§112.051).
• The successor who does not know: no acceptance, no letter of instruction, an original in a drawer the family cannot find (§112.009).
• The divorce no one revisited: the former spouse removed by statute (§112.102), the former spouse's relatives removed with them, and no new successor named.

If you have not signed yet, or need a change

An unsigned draft creates nothing; a revocable trust is amended only in writing and by the method its own instrument sets (§112.051). Whether the trust should hold the homestead, how community property is characterized when one spouse settles a trust, what a blended family or a beneficiary who receives public benefits needs, and whether a trust fits at all are questions for a licensed Texas attorney of your choosing — TrusteeClear organizes the record a signed Texas trust creates and explains what the statutes say; it does not draft or review your plan.

Once the trust is signed and funded, the successor's work is where this product lives: the duties packet, the certification from your own answers, the deadline table, the asset record and the accounting the beneficiaries may one day demand (§113.151).