What Steps Are Taken to Change a Living Trust?
Creating a living trust document can help your beneficiaries avoid probate and keep the items in your estate private when you die. If something in your situation changes so that you need to alter your living trust document, you can use a few different options to ensure that your wishes are honored.
Other People Are Reading
-
Why Change a Trust?
-
After you have created a living trust, you may need to change it for several reasons. For example, if you originally had a daughter and her husband in your will, but they later got a divorce, you may want to remove the son-in-law from the inheritance. You may also sell a piece of property that you previously included in your trust as part of an inheritance for a beneficiary. You may even want to change how your assets will be distributed.
Trust Amendments
-
One of the methods that you can use to change a living trust is an amendment. An amendment is a document that you create and attached to the original trust, which makes changes to it. This document is best suited when you only need to change a small item or add something small. For instance, if you spelled the name of one of your beneficiaries wrong, you could use an amendment to correct it. When you use an amendment, you typically must sign it in front of witnesses and a notary.
-
Trust Restatement
-
Another method that you can utilize to change a living trust is a restatement. A restatement is best used when you need to completely change the contents of your trust. With this strategy, you start the document out with a statement that makes the first trust inactive. Then you completely remake your trust from the beginning. Instead of making several amendment to your original trust document, it is sometimes easier to completely scrap it and start over with a new one.
Legal Assistance
-
When you want to either amend or restate your living trust document, you may want to hire legal help. If you use a lawyer to create the original document, you should also consider hiring one to make changes. When you make changes to a living trust, you need to make sure that they are legitimate and can be upheld in the probate court if they are contested by family members or others included as beneficiaries.
-
