When clients establish revocable trusts these days to avoid the probate process, I urge them to make sure all their assets (at least the ones without designated beneficiaries) are titled in the names of their trusts, else those rogue assets will still land in probate. The trouble is that banks and investment firms are making the process of transferring their customers' accounts into trust names more and more difficult and cumbersome all the time. They say it's new requirements coming down from the home office or the FDIC, but the red tape is often enough to make stuffing cash under the mattress look pretty appealing. Sorry all you institutional readers out there - we know it's rarely your personal fault, but that hardly makes any difference to the long-faithful customers sitting across your desk.
So, what to do? My suggestion is not to kowtow by providing full copies of your entire trust documents and all the amendments, including who all your beneficiaries are - because it's just none of their business who's going to get all your fridge magnets and ticket stubs (this is getting personal now) - particularly when we provide all our clients with perfectly good "certifications of trust" that our statutes authorize for this exact purpose and which provide all the necessary information about the trust provisions.
Instead, I suggest you have the institutions you're dealing with set up your accounts with "transfer on death" ("TOD") beneficiaries and designate your trusts as those recipients. Sure, you'll have to sign a form or two to do that, but you won't have to provide all the trust information until the time comes for the account to pay out, and then it will likely be less about the trust itself and more about establishing who the authorized trustees are.
Here's another work-around. We generally recommend that clients transfer the titles of their vehicles into trust name, too, but people often wait to do that until their next birthday month; then when the time comes, they often forget to make that change. So, to avoid the need for probate just to deal with a car still in a decedent's name, just sign the endorsement on the back of the title certificate right away and leave blank the date and all the other information about who the car will be transferred to - to be filled in when the time comes. You won't have to remember to get a new title certificate at all or to let your insurance company know to add the trust as an additional insured. If you've already made the transfers of the title to your trust name, there's no harm done, of course - and either way, make sure to take the title in the name of the trust any time you buy a new car.
Finally, and this one could mean thousands of dollars of difference to you or your family. After three years of across-the-board forbearance, Federal Student Loan interest is set to resume on September 1, and payment obligations in October. Maybe you're still dealing with loans from a graduate degree. Maybe you have "Direct Parent PLUS loans" that you took out on behalf of a child. Or maybe you're cringing as your grandchildren start their careers saddled with six figures of debt. In any event, the laws surrounding student loans make the tax code look like a children's book. Due to the nature of its creation, the student loan system is anything but intuitive or simple to navigate, and that difficulty may be leading to unnecessary anxiety or financial strain on you, your children, or beyond.
Adding to the confusion is that there are as many different kinds of student loans as there are models of cars out there on the road: Private, Stafford, FFELP/FFEL, PLUS, Direct PLUS, Direct Subsidized, Direct Unsubsidized, Direct Parent PLUS, and I'm told there are more. Each of the different variations has different strategies allowable under existing law to mitigate the financial strain they place on families. Over the past three years, a flurry of new laws has been implemented in an attempt to bring relief to individuals suffering under the Covid economy. Some of these measures, and the more powerful relief strategies, have expiration dates coming soon, yet they may take several months to properly implement.
Fortunately, help is at hand in the persons of our new colleagues, Jaran and Jacqueline Blessing, who, shall we say, are intimately familiar with this draconian system. So, if you or someone you care about has an unwieldy amount of student loan debt, I urge you to contact either of the attorneys Blessing about the issue. They can assess the totality of the crisis and be knowledgeable guides through this tangled legislative landscape. And they say it's not an exaggeration that in many cases, the right plan could save thousands of dollars, plus unquantifiable amounts of anxiety and stress. Not to be alarmist, but they told me the situation is particularly urgent for those with "Direct Parent PLUS loans" and "FFELP/FFEL loans". Jaran can be reached at jblessing@runyonlawoffice.com or Jacqueline at jacqueline@runyonlawoffice.com, and you can find them both at (603) 784-5689.