Do I need to move my bank accounts to the trust? | Siedentopf Law

In this video, Estate Planning and Probate Attorney Sarah Siedentopf talks about whether or not you need to move your bank accounts to the trust. #trustandbankaccounts #estateplanning #siedentopflaw
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Siedentopf Law focuses on helping people in the Atlanta, Georgia area plan their estates and wills, probate estates of family members, and work through probate disputes. We strive to make estate planning and probate as easy as possible, providing a concierge experience through traditional office visits, video conferencing, and visits to hospitals and assisted living centers for those who cannot drive themselves.
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Video Transcript:
- Now that I've set up a trust, what do I do with my bank accounts? How should they be connected to it? I'm Sarah Siedentopf. I'm an estate planning and probate attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. And this is a question I get a lot. I love to start with a quick answer but this one is not a quick answer because there's almost no right or wrong. It's very dependent on what you would like to do. The wrong answer is not to have it connected to the trust or automatically going to anyone after your death, but you're here asking this question so you're not making that choice. With trust planning, one of the major goals is to make sure that everything avoids probate, and so your bank account either needs to be owned by your trust. So we would go to the bank, have them change the paperwork from, you know, from me to me as trustee of my trust. They'll have forms to fill out. It'll, you know, change what your bank statements say. If you still write checks, it'll, you know say trust on your checks. So you'll see, and the bank will be able to see everyone will be able to see this account is owned by a trust. The benefit of this is that if something happens to you and you're alive but unable to continue as trustee, whoever steps in, whoever you've chosen as your backup trustee will have access to this money for you. Of course, you can always have a power of attorney who would have access to the money if it was outside the trust. So it's not the only way to have access to the money during your lifetime if you can't do it. The other choice is to make your trust a payable on death beneficiary. And in that case, it's again, paperwork with the bank. Most banks do allow payable and death beneficiaries and you just set the trust up that way. Now, that's not always what you want to do because by the time we're getting to payable on death beneficiaries, you might say, you know what? My kids are, you know, 45 and 47, let's send it straight to the kids. Often, that's totally fine. The reason you would set it up going into the trust is for long-term management or if there are minors involved or something like that. So it's very, you know, situation dependent, preference dependent, and again, there's usually no wrong answers other than doing nothing. As long as you have thought through it and decided and have a rationale for what you're doing, you are probably on the right track. If you've got more questions about this, I would love to hear from you and also please like and subscribe. Thanks.