Reviewing An Aging Parent's Trust & It Is Not Funded?

I've received multiple inquiries on this very issue over the past few days: My parents have a trust. And I just realized that their home is not in their trust.

Generally, if a grant deed was not prepared and recorded to transfer title of the home into the Living Trust -- it is not in the Living Trust. You can check with the County Recorder's office or a local realtor/title company to see if your parents' home is in their Living Trust.

As one potential client summed up in an email to me this morning, my parents' Living Trust is useless because their property was not transferred into their trust. What do I do?

If you already have a durable power of attorney over your parents' financial affairs and it includes the power to manage real property and the power to create/modify/revoke trusts, you can prepare and sign a grant deed on behalf of your parents to transfer their home into their Living Trust.

If you do not have a durable power of attorney over your parents' financial affairs, you can still work with your parents to help them prepare a grant dsign this grant deed. This means that they must understand the nature of the transaction and intend to transfer their home into their existing Living Trust.

A grant deed is a devilishly simple document to prepare for those who know what they are doing. The average fee for a professional to prepare a grant deed along with the other necessary documents for recording is between $150 to $225. This preparation fee normally incorporates the recording costs with the County Recorder, recording the actual document in a timely fashion and including a preliminary change of ownership form.