After my father died, my mother had a Trust created and made me the Trustee which was fine with me. This was a way to avoid probate which I had already gone through with my father and took time and was quite expensive, although I did find out later that the attorney used for both probate and her Trust was one of the most expensive in this city!
But anyway by having the Trust in place it was fairly easy to liquidate and divide out my mom's estate except for one stock that we never placed in her Trust and it was not one held by a well known brokerage like Schwab or Fidelity. It was a smaller company in New York. Well that company did not want to turn over her stock without a waiver of probate or proof of completed probate which we were obviously not going through. Texas does not do nor even recognizes a "waiver of probate". Anyway my hubby and I decided last year to get a Trust for us and had a nice female estate attorney draw up our Trust at a much more reasonable fee than the other attorney. She also eventually helped us with my mom's stock issue though that was not cheap!! Flat fee for a Trust but for other things it was more like hourly fees and again, was way more expensive than I expected.
Anyway that finally got resolved and distributed last October several months following my moms death.
So back to our Trust. It is very disturbing to me that something that is a legal form of ownership, meant to make life easier upon the death of the trustees of a Trust, can turn out to be so difficult to obtain everything that is needed as instructed by the Trust attorney. Whenever anyone gets a Trust the objective is to place every asset owned in the name of that trust. Okay. I thought no problem, I'm a financial person. So we went to our bank to change the ownership of our accounts into the Trust name. They refused to do it. Not unless we got a separate tax ID for the Trust. Our Trust attorney assured us we could use one of our social security numbers which is exactly what my mom did as well. It didn't matter how I explained it to the lady at the bank they would not do that. I was not about to set up a separate Tax ID for it that would require separate record keeping and possible tax returns for the Trust. It was not meant to be that difficult and we do not have that many assets anyway.
I called the attorney's office and we were able to obtain the name of a bank that would allow us to open an account in the name of the Trust. So we pulled all our accounts from the nationally well known bank to this other bank, so that we could get our meager assets into the Trust name. But then I wanted to have my paychecks direct deposited into that account. Nope. Couldn't do that unless the checks were made out to the Trust. Seriously? Oh.. I failed to mention that when my mom was alive we were able to get that first bank that refused me, to change her account into a Trust savings so that really made no sense that when we went to change our account holder name, they refused.
We did open a Trust account which was all well and good. But we also had to open a regular bank account so that I could deposit my paychecks into that account. Seriously! Why do they make having things in a Trust so difficult?
Okay fast forward to the last thing we had to get into the Trust, our vehicles which we finally got titled into the Trust as our attorney recommended. I had asked if that was really necessary and she gave me the example of if my husband died, I would not be able to transfer the title out of his name without going through probate, the thing we were avoiding by going through all this Trust mess. The DMV would want the Death Certificate and the Affidavit of probate or whatever the document was called that I took with me when we changed my dad's car title. So we just did what we were told to do right?
I got around to emailing our auto insurance agent today with a copy of the titles in case they needed to be notified of the change. What do I get? A reply email from our agent telling me that they can only insure individuals who own their cars. WTF? So now we have another problem. I don't know if that means we aren't insured now or what. Hubby is going to go talk to our agent but I just can't believe whenever we are doing something we are told to do (which is allowed to be done and for which the purpose of the Trust is in place), it causes nothing but problems. We've had our cars and homeowners insurance with them for years too. And to get that short response like that to me was really rude!
If we can't keep our insurance, we'll either have to spend time and effort calling insurance companies to see if they will cover autos titled in a Trust or if need be change the title back again which would really make me angry. It is not right! We are still the ones driving the cars. Our Trust cannot drive the cars, we are the trustees of the Trust . UGH! So the saga continues...
Even though probate is very costly and takes months to go through, I am not really sure that I would recommend going the Trust route for anyone who might ask me. I'm keeping the Trust now that we've gone through all of it, but it is very maddening to have so many issues that go along with moving things into the Trust! The attorneys that handle setting up the Trust should give folks a list of all the banks and insurance companies that recognize Revocable Trusts under one or the other persons identification so that clients can know where they can turn when they keep hitting walls like this. I'm afraid to call the attorney who did our Trust as I am worried I'd get billed for the phone call!
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