Transfer-on-death and payable-on-death registrations move brokerage, bank, and (in 30+ states) real estate outside probate at zero cost.
TOD registration on brokerage accounts and POD on bank accounts pass the asset directly to named beneficiaries at death with a death certificate — no probate, no trust, no cost. 30+ states also allow a Transfer-on-Death Deed (a/k/a beneficiary deed) for real estate, which is revocable and keeps full step-up basis (unlike a lifetime gift of the deed). Advantages over joint tenancy: no gift on creation, no exposure to the beneficiary's creditors during your life, no loss of basis step-up. Limits: no incapacity planning, no contingency structure for a predeceased or minor beneficiary, no asset protection for the recipient, and designations silently override your will — so audit them together.
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.
An unfunded revocable trust avoids nothing. Retitle deeds, brokerage, LLC interests and business shares in the right order.
Married-couple-only titling in ~25 states makes the asset unreachable by ONE spouse's individual creditors.
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.