A signed trust that owns nothing does nothing. Funding is the transfer work.
Funding a revocable living trust means moving each asset into it, one asset at a time, using whichever act that asset requires: retitling it to the trustee, naming the trust on a beneficiary designation, contributing cash to the trust’s own account, or assigning an interest by an instrument counsel drafts. Each transfer finishes at the institution that holds the asset, and it is finished only when that institution’s own record shows it.
Signing a revocable living trust creates a legal container with instructions attached. It does not move anything into it. Until an asset is retitled, designated, contributed, or assigned, the trust holds nothing, and the instructions apply to nothing.
That gap is where estate plans fail quietly. The signing appointment feels like the end of the work, the binder goes on a shelf, and the funding letter listing what still has to move is the part nobody finishes. Nothing announces the failure. It surfaces at death, when an asset everyone assumed was in the trust turns out to be in probate.
A trust that has been executed is not a trust that has been funded. The two happen weeks or months apart, at different institutions, and only the first one has a signing appointment to mark it.
There is no single funding step. What the asset is decides which act moves it, who has to sign, and what the institution sends back.
| The act | What it fits | What finishes it |
|---|---|---|
| Retitle to the trustee | Real property, brokerage and bank accounts, registered securities, vehicles in some states | The registry’s updated record: a recorded deed, a re-registered position, a renamed account |
| Name the trust as beneficiary | Retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities, transfer-on-death accounts | The institution’s own confirmation or a statement page naming the trust |
| Contribute cash | Funding the trust’s own bank account, initial funding of a new trust | The receiving statement showing the deposit in the trust’s account |
| Assign the interest | LLC and partnership interests, closely held stock, personal property, intellectual property | The executed assignment, plus the company’s own record: an amended operating agreement or updated member ledger |
Choosing the wrong act is the common error, and it is usually a retirement account. An IRA cannot be retitled to a trust without being distributed, which is a taxable event. It is designated, not retitled, and whether it should name the trust at all is a question with real tax consequences for your counsel.
The account number, the legal description, the certificate numbers. An asset described loosely on the funding schedule is an asset nobody can later confirm moved.
Nearly every one has its own form, and it will insist on that form over any letter you write. Ask for the trust transfer packet by name, and ask whether they want the full trust or a certification of trust.
Most transfers need the owner to sign as the current owner, and then the trustee to sign as the receiving party. When one person holds both roles, both signatures are still required, and the record should show them separately.
Whether it went by portal upload, by mail, or over a branch counter, and to whom. This is the date the chasing clock starts on.
Not an acknowledgement that a form was received. The updated registration, the recorded instrument, the statement page. Until that arrives, the asset has not moved.
The test is the same everywhere: the record that would satisfy a stranger reading the file in ten years, produced by the institution that holds the asset rather than by anyone in your office.
Funding tends to cover the house and the brokerage account and stop. What gets missed is predictable enough to be worth a list.
Funding is not finished once. Every new account, every refinance that requires the property out of the trust, and every asset bought later reopens the question. A funding schedule that is reviewed each year catches what a one-time push cannot.
The deliverable at the end of funding is not a stack of forms. It is one schedule, per client or per family, that a stranger can read: every asset counsel named, which act it needed, its state in plain words, and the document that proved it.
Two of those four lines are open. That is a normal funding, and it is the reason the schedule exists: the open ones are the work, and they are visible instead of remembered.
This is an explanation of how a transaction works, not legal or tax advice. Termn is not a law firm, a bank, an escrow agent, or a money transmitter, and it never holds your money. What is right for your situation is a question for your own counsel, who decides it and drafts the documents that carry it.
Termn puts every named asset on one funding schedule and tracks each through the act that fits it, holding the institution’s own evidence against the asset it proves.
How Termn runs trust funding Your first workspace is free, and nothing goes out until you send it.
The form at the insurance company usually wins. It is worth knowing why.
Two different paths, and a signature guarantee most people have never heard of.
Signing a deed does not move the property. Recording is what the world can see.
The asset-by-asset checklist, and what counts as proof. Free PDF, emailed to you.
Everything else is in the learning center.
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