An unfunded trust is a document, not a plan. Termn runs the funding: every asset tracked from counsel’s instruction to the institution’s confirmation, on one schedule counsel and the family can both read. Run it for your clients, or for your own family’s trust — it’s the same tool either way.
Start funding this trust free See a sample schedule What it costs
Start with the asset list, one row at a time · No card to start · Termn is not a law firm and gives no legal advice
One workspace holds a client’s whole funding — every trust, every asset, one number. List everything first in plain words, before any detail is needed; then say what funding each one means, and work the list. The schedule becomes the deliverable counsel actually owes: every asset, its state, whose turn it is, and what has been confirmed.
Everything that has to move, in the family’s own words — the house, his IRA, the piano. No account numbers, no legal descriptions: those get asked one row at a time, when that row is actually worked.
Funding is four different acts, and each asset takes the one that fits: retitle it, name the trust to receive it later, contribute cash into it, or assign it. Only some involve signing anything — a designation is the institution’s own form, and cash into the trust’s account is signed by nobody.
The institution’s own record confirms it: an updated registration, a recording stamp, a statement naming the trust. A typed “done” never counts, and the number on the schedule only moves for real evidence.
| The asset | What moves | What proves it |
|---|---|---|
| Stock and brokerage positions | The position retitled to the trustee, with a specialist coordinating the transfer agent or broker. Medallion requirements are recorded as facts. | The updated registration or a broker statement showing the trust’s registration line. |
| Real property | The wet-signed, notarized quitclaim deed, submitted to the county recorder. Termn tracks the signing it cannot perform and helps with the legwork it can. | The recorded instrument: stamp, instrument number, date. A recorder rejection goes back to counsel where you can see it, never silently retried. |
| Accounts with beneficiaries | The institution’s own designation form, filed by the owner, naming the trust. | An uploaded confirmation: a statement page or letter naming the trust as beneficiary, confirmed by someone with authority. |
Counsel decides what moves · Termn tracks the execution · The ledger is the funding schedule
One client, six assets, halfway through. Nothing here is a screen to learn: it is the schedule counsel already owes the family, kept current by what came back from the institutions rather than by whoever last updated the Word table.
| The asset | What funding it means | State | What the file holds |
|---|---|---|---|
| The house on Locust St. | Quitclaim deed to the trustee, recorded with the county. | Confirmed | Recorded Mar 4 · instrument 2026-014882 · Whatcom County. |
| Brokerage ····4471 | The position retitled to the trustee by the transfer agent. | Confirmed | Statement page, Mar 1: registration line reads the trust’s name. |
| His IRA | The trust named as beneficiary. A retirement account is not retitled — that is generally a taxable distribution of the whole account. | In force | Institution’s confirmation letter, Feb 19. Reverified each year, because a designation can quietly break. |
| Checking ····2210 | Cash contributed into the trust’s own account. Nobody signs anything. | In motion | Sent to the bank Mar 6. Nothing back yet; the line names who it waits on. |
| The cabin | Quitclaim deed, wet-signed and notarized. | Never started | Named in the funding letter. Nothing sent, nothing back. |
| Term life policy | The trust named as beneficiary on the carrier’s own form. | Never started | Named in the funding letter. Nothing sent, nothing back. |
| 6 assets named | 2 confirmed · 1 in force · 1 in motion · 2 never started | ||
A demonstration, not a client record · A typed “done” never reads as confirmed · The last two rows are the reason the schedule exists
Funding fails in the gaps between people, so the boundaries are drawn before you start rather than discovered later.
One client in front of you, a schedule somebody already maintains, or a filing cabinet of trusts that were signed years ago. They are different jobs.
Paste the asset list straight out of the funding letter — one per line, bullets and dashes and all. Nothing else is asked for until you work that row, so a list you already have becomes the schedule in one sitting.
Your first workspace is free, and one workspace is the client’s whole funding. One family, start to finish, for nothing.
Start free, no cardThe person maintaining the Word table is who this is built for: the schedule updates from what the institutions send back, not from whoever remembers the phone call, and counsel can read the same page without asking for a status.
Bringing a second person into the same workspace is what the Operator subscription is for — seats are the only thing it sells. Clients after your first are $149 each, once.
What a seat costsNothing changes in how the office works. Send the funding letters you already wrote; get one schedule per client back, and the number nobody has — how many of the trusts this firm drafted were ever actually funded.
One flat fee for the whole book, never a percentage of what the assets are worth. Asking for a quote commits you to nothing.
The funding auditA beneficiary designation confirmed today can be undone by a refinance or an account migration tomorrow. Termn keeps each one on the record as in force and asks again every year whether it still is, so drift gets caught while the fix is still a form to file, long before it reaches probate.
Trusts that lend to family members pair naturally with a personal loan: the same contacts, and one ledger showing both the assets funded in and the note still outstanding.
“Retitle 1,200 shares of Acme Inc. to the trustee.” Name the owner, the trustee, and the asset in an email to start@termn.ai, and the transfer drafts itself on the same thread — a stock transfer, a beneficiary designation, or a quitclaim deed alike. Nobody is contacted until you review the draft and send it from the app.
Open the draft with the blanks marked, or read how starting by email works.
The owner and trustee are often one person, and often in their seventies. Here is what is actually asked of them.
An email sent through Termn in your name carries one secure link to the agreement. It opens in the browser: no account to create, no app to install, nothing to pay.
Each signature is requested in plain words, once for each capacity: owner and trustee, recorded distinctly even when they are the same person. Where an institution insists on its own form or a notarized deed, the page says so. The signature is theirs alone; the chasing and the evidence gathering can sit with your side, and the record names who did each.
Every act is confirmed by email, to them and to you. If they hesitate, Termn does the reminding for seven days, so the awkward follow-up is never yours.
No account and nothing to install · They never pay Termn anything unless you assign the activation to them · A lost email is re-sent from /my, any time
The client is one workspace — every trust they hold and every asset in it: free if it’s your first and you’re working alone, $149 once after that. It covers everything inside (the deed, the stock, every designation) and the annual reverifications after. We never price per document, per asset, or per trust — a forty-asset schedule costs what a three-asset one does.
Your first workspace is free — enough to fund one family’s trust start to finish, whether that family is a client or your own. See all pricing. Firms funding trusts every month want the Operator subscription. Funding your own family’s trust, not a client’s? It has its own page.
Sitting on a back book of signed trusts? The funding audit measures the whole book, client by client, for one flat fee.
Plain explanations of the transaction itself, free and open, with the statutes and rules they rest on named and linked.
A signed trust that owns nothing does nothing. Funding is the transfer work.
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.
Everything else is in the learning center.
Your first workspace is free: one live workspace, unlimited agreements inside it, no card.
Start funding this trust freeRather talk it through first? Contact us at sales@termn.ai.