Secure Your Future
Video Transcribed: Hello, this is Oklahoma wills and trust attorney Jason Lile, and I wanted to take some time to speak to you today about living trusts. Specifically, I wanted to talk to you about what can go into a living trust if you need one.
So, as I describe it, a living trust is like an imaginary box, and inside this imaginary box you put your things. And once the imaginary box is created and made, then you have control of your things during your lifetime. That’s why we call it a living trust. You can revoke it anytime, that’s the term living revocable trust.
And the third thing about it is you can put things in it. So what is it that you would put in a living trust? Well, at the back of a living trust is something called a schedule. A schedule is nothing more complicated than a list, and this list is important for two things.
Number one, for a trust to be valid, it has to be funded. Funded with something, anything. A bank account, a car, a piece of property, a vehicle. If you fund it with one thing, then the trust is valid. And it should be something that causes you to go transfer title, like a bank account you would put Jason Lile as the trustee of the Jason Lile Living Revocable Trust. Same with cars and houses, you would title them that way.
Everything else is perfectly appropriate to go in the trust on one condition, and that is that it’s not governed by some separate contract. For example, life insurance policies typically do not go in a trust. Retirement accounts, those have designated beneficiaries, and it’s an agreement between you and the administrator of that policy or plan. Those don’t need to go into a trust.
But everything else functions exactly like a will, where you put your wishes about your specific things in a trust. And then, if you pass away, if you’re incapacitated, you have a successor trustee. And the successor trustee takes care of operating according to your will, just like a will.
So that’s what you would put in a trust. And if you need help creating a trust, or like questions answered about a trust, I am Tulsa living trusts lawyer Jason Lile, and you can find me at oklahomawillandtrust.com, or you can give us a call at 918-876-4500, and ask for Jason Lile, and I’ll be happy to help you out.