I am currently working on a probate for a woman who passed away about a year after setting up a Louisiana Revocable Living Trust for the purpose of avoiding probate. When going through the estate planning process, she did not realize the importance of having all of her brokerage accounts out of her name and into the trust before her death. This is because brokerage accounts are probate assets that will become frozen when you pass if they are still titled in your name.
I assume life got in the way, so she never transferred the accounts into the trust. When she died unexpectedly earlier this year and the accounts were not yet in her trust, this forced the family to open a court supervised probate. The entire reason for creating the trust was undone and now the family faces the additional cost and delay of probating this estate. This could have all been avoided if the client had not waited so long to take the appropriate steps in making sure her trust was fully funded.
Living Trusts, when done right, are a great tool to minimize thousands of dollars in costs, months of delay, and the stress of your family enduring a drawn out probate procedure. If you want to make sure your living trust is done right, call (504) 274-1980 in the Metairie and New Orleans Area or call (985) 246-3020 in Mandeville, Covington, Slidell, Houma, Thibodaux, and surrounding areas.