Hi, Lee Phillips, I'm an attorney.
I deal on estate planning a lot.
In fact, I'm a Supreme Court counsel.
Let me talk to you about opening a bank account in the name
of a living revocable trust.
You set up the living irrevocable trust.
Everybody says, OK, you've got to fund the trust.
Actually, the lawyer, half the time or three quarters
of the time, writes you a letter that says, you know,
the trust really needs to be funded.
Well, funding the trust is the key element of the trust.
If it's going to avoid probate, it's got to be funded.
That means it has to own the cars, the house, the boats,
the bank accounts, the brokerage accounts, everything.
Let's do a bank account.
You're going to get out of the bank--
and 35 years ago, when I started doing this, none of the banks
understood what a living revocable trust was.
You'd roll in with the trust.
You'd say, I want to put the bank account of the trust.
And the little girl would look at you like huh.
Today, most of the banks understand the trusts.
And what you should do, this is all you should have to do,
is get a new signature card.
The new signature card is going to be filled out
with the name of the trust as the owner.
So it's the John Doe trust or the Pretty Yellow trust
or whatever is, the name of the trust,
the date of the trust, September 10, 2009, and the trustee.
Who's the trustee?
Ideally it would be John Doe trustee and successor trustees,
but nobody ever puts the and successor trustees on.
The bank just knows that there's going to be successor trustees.
So is the John Doe trust, under agreement,
UA, September 10, 2009-- whatever it was--
and John Doe trustee.
And trustee can be abbreviated TTEE.
And you can abbreviate John Doe TR.
And if you'll note, down the side
of the card or the bottom of the card or wherever it is,
they say is this a personal account,
is this a joint account, is this a company account.
And they'll always have, is this a trust account.
You check that box.
Now, you shouldn't have to reprint your checks.
All you've done is made out the new signature card.
You can still use the same checks.
They should not change the number of the signature--
or excuse me, the number on your checking account.
I had a case just a couple weeks ago as a matter of fact,
the bank absolutely insisted, no, you're
going to close this account and you're
going to open a new account in the name of the trust.
No, you shouldn't have to do that.
You have an established bank account.
You have checks printed.
You can print anything you want on your checks.
You don't have to print the name of the trust.
You don't have to print anything on a check,
but you can print whatever you want.
So use your old checks, fine.
Just keep them in your name, no big deal.
Nobody needs to know that this trust exists or is actually
the owner of the bank account, except the bank.
Now, I've had a number of cases where the banks say,
we need a tax ID number for your trust.
The tax ID number for your living revocable trust
is, by law, your social security number.
You give them your social security number.
And I had a case-- oh by the way,
the bank that insisted that we open a new account.
I said, fine, you open a new account.
You go to a different bank then and see what they say.
I never heard back, so I suspect when they used that line,
they got what they wanted.
But I had a case a couple years ago, a doctor in Virginia
opening-- well, they had a credit union account,
and they wanted to change the credit union account
to the name of the trust.
The credit union absolutely insisted upon a tax ID number
for this trust.
And I called and we talked.
Nope, got to have tax-- this is our policy.
Don't care what the law is, this is our policy.
And finally I said to the doctor, well,
I would suggest you go to the Credit Union down the street
and you open another account.
The doctor remove $1.5 million out of the credit union.
I would think somebody's head might be spinning on one.
But the banks, they have their little policies and stuff
and you just can't get around them.
Generally though, walk in, change
the signature card, do not change the bank account number,
do not change the checks, and it's your social security
number.
It should go pretty clean.
Now they are going to ask for a copy of the trust.
They'll take the copy in the first page,
the copy of the page that talks about trustees,
the powers of the trustees, and the signature page.
They will put that in your file at the bank.
And they are agreeing that they're
going to govern that account by the terms of that trust.
You can make out another trust, I don't care,
we're governing it by this trust.
And so you can have-- take the trust in,
they'll take copies of it.
Or you can take-- a certification,
we call it, or a summary of the trust,
and they'll take that, photograph it, put it
in your file.
That way, when your son or your daughter or whoever
shows up after you're dead and says, hi look, here's trust,
here's mom's death certificate, I
need to get into a bank account, I'm the next trustee.
They go on into the back, they look up the paperwork
that they've got and it says daughter next trustee.
They walk back out and they say, hey, you got any ID, sign here.
We went right out and around probate with the bank.
It was slick.
This is Lee Phillips talking about how
to put bank accounts into living revocable trusts.