An unfunded revocable trust avoids nothing. Retitle deeds, brokerage, LLC interests and business shares in the right order.
Signing the trust document is roughly 20% of the work; funding is the rest. Correct sequence: (1) record new deeds transferring real estate to the trust (check lender due-on-sale carve-out under the Garn-St Germain Act §1701j-3, which exempts transfers to a grantor's own revocable trust), (2) retitle taxable brokerage and bank accounts, (3) assign LLC/partnership interests (amend the operating agreement), (4) transfer S-corp shares (verify the trust is a permitted S-corp shareholder — grantor trusts qualify), (5) leave retirement accounts and annuities OUTSIDE the trust and use beneficiary designations instead (trust-as-IRA-beneficiary usually accelerates the SECURE Act 10-year payout), (6) execute a pour-over will as backstop for anything missed.
Click Generate advisory deep dive for mechanics, IRC citations, a step-by-step execution plan, a worked numeric example on your profile, costs, risks, and this-week actions.
Retitle assets into a fully-amendable trust: skip probate entirely, keep the transfer private, retain 100% control.
Married-couple-only titling in ~25 states makes the asset unreachable by ONE spouse's individual creditors.
Transfer-on-death and payable-on-death registrations move brokerage, bank, and (in 30+ states) real estate outside probate at zero cost.
Run every asset through one matrix: probate exposure, basis step-up, creditor reach, gift-tax event, incapacity coverage.
Out-of-state real estate triggers a separate probate in each state. A trust or LLC collapses them into one.
Title passes automatically to the survivor with no probate — free to set up, but with real basis and creditor tradeoffs.