Not long ago we had a signing meeting for a client I will call Ruth. Ruth is exactly the kind of client we love: kind, and clear about what she wanted. She had worked her whole life, and she wanted what she built to go to her daughter, not to a nursing home.
She brought her daughter, who is her trustee, and a longtime friend, who is her backup trustee. Three of them around the table. We walked through her trust diagram, the witnesses came in, and everyone signed.
Then we got to the binder.
When we put a deed into a trust, we don’t just prepare the new deed. We go back and pull every prior deed we can find on that property: the whole chain, in order, behind the new one. The trust, the wills, the powers of attorney, the health care directive, and the deeds all go into one binder, tabbed.
I told them the goal is simple. This binder is the source of truth. If her daughter has a question in fifteen years, it is in here. If a title company has a question, it is in here. Nobody has to go digging through a filing cabinet or the courthouse records at the worst possible time.
At the end of the meeting, the friend, the backup trustee, said, “I don’t want to take away from Ruth’s meeting. But can I ask you a question?”
She and her husband set up a trust years ago. They have everything in it. But it is not organized like this. She had started to wonder whether they even have the right kind of trust for what they want now. And after watching Ruth’s meeting, she said, “Something’s not sitting right with me.”
So we are going to sit down with them.
I tell this story because it happens more than you would think. People come in with a parent or a friend, see how we do this, and ask about their own plan before they leave.
Here is what I think they are reacting to. Law is broad. I don’t practice health care law. I don’t practice criminal law or family law. We do one thing. When an office only dabbles in estate planning, the plan tends to come out the way they happen to do it that year, and updates tend to wait. When it is all you do, you build a process for it, from the first meeting to the binder to a check-in every three years.
If you have a trust and aren’t sure it still fits, here’s a quick test
- Can you put your hands on the original right now?
- Does your trustee know where it is and what is in it?
- Are the deeds, and the deeds behind them, with it?
- Have your accounts been made payable to the trust?
- Does it do what you want now, not what you wanted when you signed it?
If any of those give you pause, bring it in. We’ll review it and give you a straight answer, including if the answer is that it’s fine.
Book a free 15-minute call or call (573) 334-5125.
This post is general information, not legal advice. Details have been changed to protect our clients’ privacy.