If you’ve already explored our pages on Estate Planning Essentials and Asset Protection Planning, you know that a well-crafted plan can protect your assets, avoid probate, and provide long-term security for your loved ones. But drafting the right documents is only part of the equation. What truly matters is whether your plan will work when it’s needed. Unfortunately, many estate plans fall short because assets were never properly aligned with the documents or in more technical terms, properly “funded”. That’s why we take the extra step — guiding you through the critical process of “funding” your plan, and when possible, doing the work for you — to ensure your plan actually does what it was designed to do.
Most people think that once their estate plan is signed, they’re done. But if your assets aren’t properly titled and connected to your plan — the plan may not work as intended.
We do our best to make sure that never happens.
At the Estate and Elder Law Planning Center, we go beyond just preparing the documents. We walk with you through the critical next step: aligning your assets with your plan. This is called “funding,” and it’s how your plan is empowered to actually avoid probate, provide protections for your beneficiaries, and meet your goals.
Even the most well-drafted estate plan can fail if the assets aren’t properly aligned with it. For example, you can have a carefully crafted trust that outlines your wishes in detail, but many people don’t realize that in order for a trust to control a person’s assets — and thereby determine what happens to them — those assets must be titled in the name of the trust. In other words, the trust must actually own the assets. A trust document, no matter how well-drafted, has no power over assets that haven’t been properly transferred into it. Without this crucial step, those assets may still go through probate court or pass outside the terms you intended.
And funding isn’t just important for plans that include a trust. Even if your plan is built around beneficiary designations, payable-on-death accounts, or transfer-on-death deeds, it’s still essential that each asset is properly titled and coordinated with your overall estate plan. Without this alignment, your assets could pass in unintended ways or end up in probate — defeating the purpose of your plan. We help ensure that all types of plans are fully implemented, whether they include a trust or not.
Without proper, complete funding:We have an entire Funding Department dedicated to helping you complete this process. Here’s how we make sure your plan is fully implemented:
At many firms, the funding process is largely left to the client. While they may explain how important it is — and that the plan may not work as intended without it — the client is typically responsible for contacting each financial institution, completing the necessary paperwork, and updating titles and beneficiary designations on accounts, insurance policies, vehicle titles, and more.
We understand why so many firms take that approach. Funding is often time-consuming, tedious, and often involves navigating different procedures for each type of asset.
Because our firm focuses exclusively on estate planning and elder law, we feel that we would not be living up to our commitment to a full service approach if we do not build our process to include support for this critical step. We don’t just prepare a plan and then leave our clients on their own to update their assets to reflect that plan. We assist our clients in carrying out the actions needed to align their assets with their plan so it does its job — whether that involves helping with forms, reviewing account titling, or identifying overlooked assets.
Before we end on the topic of funding, let us explain what funding through the box analogy. This analogy is most applicable to a trust, but remember that the funding process is equally important even if your plan does not include a trust.
One of the simplest ways to understand the importance of funding a trust is to think of your trust as a box.
When we create your trust, we’re essentially building a sturdy, well-designed box and placing your instructions inside — who should receive what, when, and under what conditions. But here’s the key: your trust only controls the assets that are actually placed inside the box.
If an asset is not in the box — meaning it hasn’t been titled in the name of the trust or designated to pass to the trust — then the instructions inside the box don’t apply to it. That asset may end up going through probate before being placed in the trust, through a pour over will, or if there is no valid pour over will, the asset may end up being distributed in a way you didn’t intend.
Some assets need to be placed directly into the box during your lifetime, such as bank accounts or real estate. Others may be more appropriate to direct into the box at your death, using beneficiary designations or transfer-on-death instructions that point to the trust. This is another reason we believe incorporating a strong focus on funding in the planning process is so important — the specific goals you want your trust to achieve can dictate whether we recommend titling your assets in the trust during your life or making them payable on death to it.
Either way, an unfunded or partially funded trust can’t do its job. That’s why this step is so critical — and why we make it part of our full-service approach to planning.
Funding can be confusing, overwhelming, and — let’s be honest — time-consuming. That’s why we do it with you and for you. When you choose our firm, you’re choosing peace of mind, knowing your plan isn’t just drafted… it’s ready to work.
