Living Trust Las Vegas: The Step Most Attorneys Skip

Living Trusts are powerful estate planning tools that help Las Vegas families avoid probate and protect their assets. Consulting a Las Vegas trusts attorney can provide valuable guidance to ensure your trust is set up and managed correctly. But many people don’t realize that simply creating a trust document isn’t enough. You need to properly fund it for the trust to work as intended.

Trust funding is the critical process of transferring your assets into your trust. Without this step, your carefully drafted Living Trust is just an empty bucket that can’t protect anything. If you’re ready to secure your future, contact a trusted Living Trust attorney in Las Vegas today for a free consultation.

In this article, you’ll discover the essential steps of trust funding, why so many trusts fail to work properly, and how working with a Las Vegas living trust attorney can save your family from costly probate despite having a trust. You’ll also learn about the different estate planning options available and how to choose the right one for your needs. I’ll share real solutions to common funding challenges and give you a clear roadmap to protect your legacy.

What is Trust Funding, Exactly?

Picture this: you buy a high-tech, fireproof safe to protect your most precious valuables. You place it in your home, program the combination, and feel secure. But you leave your jewelry, cash, and important papers sitting on the dining room table. The safe, for all its strength, protects nothing.

A Living Trust is that safe. Funding is the act of placing your valuables inside it.

Legally, funding means retitling your assets. You change the ownership from your name as an individual to your name as the trustee of your trust. This process is also referred to as transferring assets into the trust, which is a key step in effective estate planning. For example, a home deed might change from being owned by “Jane and John Doe” to being owned by “Jane and John Doe, Trustees of the Doe Family Trust dated August 13, 2025.” This simple change is what legally places the asset under the trust’s control and keeps it out of the probate court system. Without this change in title, the asset remains outside the trust and is subject to probate upon your death.

Grantors are the individuals who establish the trust and are responsible for transferring assets into it, ensuring that their intentions for asset protection and estate administration are fulfilled.

The Catastrophic Cost of an Unfunded Trust

When an asset isn’t properly titled in the name of your trust, it’s as if the trust doesn’t exist for that asset. If you pass away with a house, a bank account, or an investment portfolio still in your individual name, your family will be forced to open a probate case to gain control of it. These court proceedings can expose the details of estates, including all assets and property, to the public.

This is the ultimate irony. The very tool you created to avoid probate becomes ineffective, all because of an administrative oversight.

Sometimes this leads to what I call the “Double Probate.” This is a nightmare scenario where a family has to administer the assets that were properly funded into the trust while simultaneously hiring another attorney to handle a separate probate case for the assets that were left out. Double the cost, double the stress, double the time.

The consequences are severe. Probate in Nevada can be expensive, potentially consuming up to 7% of the value of the estates going through the court process. It’s also painfully slow, often taking a year or more to resolve. Worst of all, it’s a public proceeding. A complete list of your assets, their values, your debts, and the names of your heirs becomes part of the public record, accessible to anyone.

A Practical Guide: What Assets Need to Go Into Your Trust?

Properly funding a Living Trust requires a methodical approach. While every family’s situation is unique, most assets fall into several key categories. It is crucial to accurately identify named beneficiaries for assets placed in the trust, as these designations determine who will receive the assets according to the trust’s terms and cannot be changed once the trust is established.

Proper trust funding also ensures efficient asset distribution, allowing beneficiaries to receive their inheritances as intended and supporting effective trust administration.

Real Estate

Any real property you own must have its title changed. This includes your primary residence in Las Vegas, a vacation cabin near Lake Tahoe, or any rental properties you own. A new deed, typically a quitclaim or grant deed, must be prepared, signed, notarized, and recorded with the appropriate county recorder’s office. For a home in Las Vegas, that means recording the deed with the Clark County Recorder.

Bank and Investment Accounts

This category includes your checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, and non-retirement brokerage accounts. You cannot simply list these accounts in your trust document. You must contact each financial institution and follow their specific process for retitling the account into the name of your trust. This usually involves filling out a new account application or a specific trust certification form provided by the bank. For trust investments, it is essential that these assets are properly titled in the name of the trust to ensure they are managed and protected according to the trust’s terms.

Business Interests

If you own a small business, such as an LLC or a partnership, your ownership interest is an asset. This interest should be formally assigned to your trust. This process might involve amending the LLC’s operating agreement or issuing new stock certificates for a corporation to reflect the trust as the owner.

Personal Property

What about your tangible belongings, such as furniture, art, jewelry, and collectibles? For these items, we use a document called a “General Assignment” or a “Bill of Sale.” This document formally transfers all of your tangible personal property into your trust. While you won’t have a title for your sofa like you do for your house, this assignment serves as legal proof that these assets belong to the trust.

What Stays Out of Your Living Trust?

Just as important as knowing what to put in your trust is knowing what to leave out. Retitling certain assets can create significant and unnecessary problems.

Retirement accounts like 401(k)s, IRAs, and other tax-deferred plans should not be owned by your Living Trust. Changing the owner of a retirement account to your trust is considered a full withdrawal by the IRS, which would trigger a massive tax bill. Instead, you should update the beneficiary designations for these accounts. You can often name your trust as the primary or secondary beneficiary, which allows the trust to control the distribution of those funds after your passing without causing a tax nightmare.

For married couples, marital trusts and QTIP trusts are often used to provide for a surviving spouse and to minimize estate tax. These trusts can be valuable estate planning tools to ensure proper management of assets and reduce federal estate tax liabilities.

Similarly, life insurance policies typically should not be owned by the trust. The correct strategy is to name the trust as the beneficiary of the death benefit. When you pass away, the insurance company pays the proceeds directly to the trust, which then protects and distributes the money according to your instructions. Additionally, if you have minor children as beneficiaries, you absolutely should name the trust as the beneficiary of the life insurance; otherwise, the life insurance will go to probate.

When considering which assets to place in a trust, it is important to evaluate the tax implications and tax considerations, including the absence of state income tax in Nevada and the potential tax advantages of proper planning. Certain trusts can help avoid estate tax and provide for minor children through testamentary trusts or other planning tools, ensuring ongoing support and appropriate asset management for young beneficiaries.

Trust Administration and Management After Funding

Once your Living Trust is properly funded, the work isn’t over. Effective trust administration and management are essential to the success of your estate plan. The trustee’s role shifts from funding the trust to actively managing trust assets, making distributions to beneficiaries, and maintaining detailed records. This ongoing process is a critical part of the estate planning journey, ensuring that your wishes are honored and your loved ones are cared for.

An experienced trust attorney can provide invaluable support during trust administration, helping the trustee navigate complex Nevada trust laws, manage investments, pay any necessary taxes, and handle distributions in accordance with the trust document. Proper trust administration not only helps avoid the costly probate process but also reduces legal fees and the risk of disputes among beneficiaries.

By prioritizing diligent trust management, you can ensure that your estate plan is carried out smoothly, assets are protected, and your legacy is preserved for future generations. This level of care provides peace of mind for both the grantor and the beneficiaries, knowing that the estate is in capable hands.

A Family Plan™ For True Peace of Mind

I have developed a proprietary estate planning system known as “The Family Plan™,” which integrates the traditional “plain old Living Trusts” with additional legal documents and strategic tools to create a vastly improved solution. Unlike standard Living Trusts, the Family Plan™ addresses many of the common issues and misconceptions that the public often associates with Living Trusts alone. Additional legal documents included in the Family Plan™ may consist of health care directives, ensuring your medical wishes are honored if you become incapacitated.

This comprehensive approach ensures broader protection for your assets and family, tackling challenges such as probate avoidance, asset protection, and legal complexities that typical Living Trusts may not fully resolve. The Family Plan™ can also include special needs trusts to provide for beneficiaries with disabilities while protecting their eligibility for government benefits such as Medicaid (for married couples) and SSI. It addresses the needs of a surviving spouse and provides strategies to manage assets for beneficiaries who may not be able to do so independently. 

Here’s a feature of the Family Plan™ that I am especially proud of. When the trust is initially funded, we prepare a list of all the assets in a report called the Asset Detail Report (ADR). We use this to verify that all the assets are properly transferred to the trust and all beneficiary designations are correct on retirement plans. 

Then we send ADR to our clients in our annual review letter so they can update us with any changes in their financial situation, including new assets they have acquired, assets they have sold, and changes in the value of assets. Our Funding Coordinator then works with the client to ensure that those assets are properly funded into the trust. It takes us a lot of time and effort to do this every year, but our mission is to ensure that the trust is properly funded and our clients are properly protected. 

Importantly, the Family PlanTM represents a unique, carefully designed product that, in my opinion, offers the best way to safeguard your legacy and provide peace of mind for your loved ones.

If you’re interested in learning how the Family PlanTM can offer you enhanced estate planning benefits beyond a traditional living trust, I encourage you to take the next step.

Schedule Your Free Consultation Today

Protect your family and future with the Family Plan system. We proudly serve clients across Las Vegas and throughout Nevada, ensuring accessible legal services tailored to your needs. Contact a trusted Living Trust attorney in Las Vegas today to schedule your free consultation and discover how this innovative approach can meet your unique needs.