How Do We Transfer Real Estate to Our Trust?
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Question:
We live in California where we had a lawyer draw up a trust for our son in case of our deaths. We have put all our real estate assets in it. The lawyer who did this retired without filing it, due to us not making our appointments since we were working out of town. The trust is complete, we had it notarized but how do we record it?
Response:
If I understand correctly, you have signed deeds to your properties conveying them to your trust, but these were never recorded at the registry of deeds. Every state handles real estate a bit differently, so I can’t be certain how this works in California. But, typically, you would file the deeds plus a certificate of trustee at the appropriate registry of deeds for the county in which your property is located (or at different registries if they are located in separate counties). In most states, the trust itself is not recorded. I’d recommend consulting with a California real estate or estate planning attorney to be sure because you don’t want to get this wrong. An error in the process could mean that the property is not in trust — making it more difficult to manage in the event of incapacity or requiring probate administration upon your deaths — or create title problems which could be very expensive to resolve.
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