I Did My Trust Online. Now What?

A California Homeowner’s Guide to Funding, Fixing and Finishing a Do-It-Yourself Trust

By Eric Ridley, attorney, Ridley Law

Coming soon to Amazon

You made your living trust online, with a kit or with a document preparer. It may work fine. It may also fail the day your family needs it, because the house was never deeded in, the will was never witnessed, or the form wasn’t written for California.

I Did My Trust Online. Now What? is a plain-English guide for California homeowners who made their own trust, and for the grown children who will rely on it. It’s written by a California attorney whose practice emphasizes estate planning, trust administration and probate, and it walks you through an audit you can run yourself, then a plan for fixing what you find.

What’s inside

The audit. The six places do-it-yourself trusts fail, and how to check each one in a month of weekends.
The papers. Which pages matter, which originals to keep, and how each document has to be signed, witnessed or notarized in California.
Funding. Why a trust controls only what it owns, how to read your deed and put the house in the trust, and how to title bank and brokerage accounts.
Beneficiary forms. Why retirement accounts and life insurance follow the form, not the trust, and what to name.
The pour-over will. What it does, what it can’t do, and the signing mistakes kits invite.
Trustee and beneficiary terms. Backup trustees, incapacity, gifts to people who die first, minors, beneficiaries on benefits and divorce.
Out-of-state forms. Community property, old A-B trust forms and other places a national form can miss.
Fine or fix. When a do-it-yourself trust is good enough, when it needs a lawyer, and how to amend or restate it without breaking it.

Every dollar example is labeled as an illustration and shows its arithmetic. Every rule is tied to its source in the California codes, the case law or federal law. The back of the book has printable checklists, worksheets, a glossary and a page of this year’s dollar limits and deadlines.

This book is general information about California law. It isn’t legal, tax or financial advice, and it isn’t affiliated with any online legal service. The people in it are composites.

Read the free guide first

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