Drafting a trust and wondering what you should name your living trust?
A close friend of mine called me and said he was buying a home and wanted to place it in a trust. We discussed preparing a trust and then we got into the name : “If I create a revocable living trust for all my assets, what do I call my trust?”
Most advice and the accepted practice from Estate Planning attorneys in the past have been to place your family name as part of the living trust.
Therefore, I would call my trust the Elan Darvish Family Trust. Then I would title the owner of all my assets held by the trust in that name.
This means for example, the deed to my home would be titled Elan Darvish , Trustee of the Elan Darvish Family Trust, dated July 4, 2021. I would then need to change the title to all of my bank accounts, LLC membership interests, C.D.’s and all my other assets.
As a result of identity theft, some Estate Planning attorneys recommend that you don’t use your family name in the name of your trust.
What should you name your living trust?
The Los Angeles Attorneys at The Darvish Firm, APC recommend that you choose a name that has meaning to you, but does not include your family name. If you are a Patriot, you may call your Trust the Red, White and Blue Living Trust, under trust dated July 4, 2012. Unfortunately this will not completely prevent identity theft, but it just makes it more difficult for identify thieves, which is a benefit to the trustee.
However, the issue that you may encounter is that banks, title companies, or investment houses, may or may not have issues as it will take longer to identify you as the trustee of the trust. In some instances, when you are purchasing or refinancing real property, the banking institution will require you to purchase or refinance in your name and then transfer title to the revocable living trust.
The way these institutions will need to identify you now is that you must now provide a “Trust Certificate. The “Trust Certificate” identifies the name of the trust, the trustee, the named successor trustee, and the trustees powers. In essence, the distributions under the trust are not revealed.
Again, you ask, what to name your revocable living trust. Our advice is to make the name reasonable.