Should your home be in the name of your living trust?

Attorney Tom Olsen: Here's a text. The text is asking, "Should I put my home into my living trust?" Chris, see, I've been doing living trust for over 30 years now. For the first many, many, many, many years, we told people, "Do not put your home into your living trust." Why? Because right now your home in Florida, the home that you live in, is absolutely protected from creditor claims because of Florida constitution that says, "No creditor may take away the home of an individual."

If you put your home into the trust, it's no longer owned by an individual, it's owned by a trust, and maybe you'd lose protection from creditor claims. We've just left the home alone. These days we have a very nice hybrid. That nice hybrid is a ladybird deed. A ladybird deed will state that as long as you are alive, the home remains in your name only, and only upon your death would it go into your trust. That's a nice way to solve that creditor issue and avoid probate on your home. That's the way we recommend it these days.

Attorney Chris Merrill: Yes. We do that. We've been doing that for clients for quite some time. I think, Tom, one of the things that when we review, and we are happy to review your existing documents for free. When we review living trust for people, one of the most common, if you will, that we find mistake is what you were just describing. Mistake being that they've created or had a living trust created. However, their home was never dealt with. Their home, they have a false sense of security, their home would end up going through probate.

The tool that you described is the perfect tool in our opinion, because one, we are making sure that all of our clients maintain their homestead protection for the Florida constitution from creditors, as well as avoiding probate.

Tom: We know that there's a lot of people that spent a lot of money on getting their living trust done. They might have done it many years ago with another lawyer, not Olsen Law Group necessarily. They're thinking, "Hey, I spent all this money on a living trust, I must have everything that I need done." That's not necessarily true, because remember, to avoid probate with a living trust, it requires two things. Number one, you've got to trust, number two, that your trust owns your assets. When we review your living trust to make sure that the wording of the trust itself is still good, we're also reviewing your assets to make sure that your trust owns your assets.

That's part number two, a very important part and something we can supply to you here at the Olsen Law Group. Remember, we'll do a free review of your existing will or living trust. You can drop it off, email it to us, make an appointment for us to review it, whatever works out best for you. If

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