Listing your real estate here will include it on the “Schedule of Assets” for your living trust which states what you are putting into your living trust.

Think of your living trust as bucket. Once you sign your living trust, you have an empty bucket. You have to fill that bucket with your assets by changing title to your real estate and your financial accounts. If you don’t change title to your assets, then a Probate may be necessary to transfer your assets to your living trust depending on the value of assets outside of your living trust.

For property, you need to do a deed that transfers title to your trust. In our checklist you receive once your estate plan is generated, we’ll give you some instructions on where to go to do your deed transferring ownership of property to your trust.

You may want to list it here, but you should probably consult with an attorney or do research before you do. There may be reasons not to put jointly owned property in a living trust. For example, if real estate is jointly owned with “rights of survivorship”, then when one joint owner dies, their share of the real estate goes to the surviving joint owner(s). If you transfer your joint interest into a trust, then it may sever your right to inherit a deceased joint owner’s share of the real estate. This can be good and bad. Good in that if you die first, you can direct where your share goes if you don’t want it to go to the surviving joint owner. Bad in that you may not inherit the deceased joint owner’s share of the real estate if they die first.