The Cost of Incomplete Funding

Dear Clients and Friends,

You’ve already done the hard part – designing and executing your estate plan. By creating a trust, you’ve set the stage for a more efficient disability and estate administration process. One of the major benefits of creating a trust-based estate plan is avoiding the probate court process after death. However, creating your trust is not the end of the road; a trust’s ability to avoid probate is only as good as its funding.

While creating a trust has put you on track to avoid probate, there are follow up tasks that need to be completed – namely, funding your trust. “Funding” your trust means updating your assets to either be owned by your trust, or be designated to pass to your trust after your death. If you do not take action to make these changes, then the assets will not be linked to your trust, and may require probate at your death.

The Cost of Incomplete Funding – Every Asset Counts!

We recently administered the estate of a client who had a trust, but was unable to complete its funding before she passed. Though most of her assets were funded, two relatively small bank accounts slipped through the cracks, and did not have her trust designated as beneficiary. As a result, these two accounts needed to go through probate.

Probating these two bank accounts added over $5,000 in expenses and months of time to the administration of this client’s estate, all of which could have been avoided if she’d filled out a beneficiary designation form with her bank.

Moral of the Story: EVERY asset counts when it comes to avoiding probate. Even low-value accounts can trigger months-long court proceedings and thousands in unnecessary fees. This is why providing your attorneys with a comprehensive, up-to-date inventory of your assets and following our funding recommendations is so important. Effort now = time and money saved later.

Is Your Trust Funded Correctly?

When you created your estate plan with us, we provided you with a detailed list of funding recommendations, which can be found on your asset spreadsheet. These recommendations direct you on how to tie each asset into your trust to avoid probate.

You already put the time and expense into setting up your trust – don’t let insufficient funding undo your hard work! Meeting with an attorney and reviewing the funding status of your current assets is the best way to ensure your estate plan functions as intended. A Legal Check-Up Meetingis the perfect opportunity to get attorney input on this crucial piece of your estate plan. Contact Christina to schedule a Legal Check-Up and confirm that your trust’s funding aligns with your goals.

Sincerely,

The Eckert Byrne LLC Team