A: When a trust becomes irrevocable (which occurs upon your death if you have a living trust), notice must be sent to your heirs and your beneficiaries that they are entitled to a copy of the trust. The beneficiary or heir may then elect to request a copy. There is no requirement that you give a copy of your living trust to your beneficiaries during your lifetime.

A: I recommend that you use an attorney to make the changes to the trust because an error in a change may result in thousands of dollars being spent to correct it later. However, if you are just changing the names of the charities and not making any other changes to the trust, the attorneys' fees to do so should be less than $1,000.

A: Thank you for the follow up and I'm sorry if my original answer was unclear, but I am unclear as to how an account holder transferred title to an individual retirement account to a trust as only an individual may hold title to such an account and a trust is not an individual.

Assuming it remained an IRA as you have stated, I will have to assume that the account holder still reported it as owned by your mother individually for purposes of answering the question.

As an IRA, it can be transferred to three separate inherited IRAs with each of you setting up a new account in the name of your mother for the benefit of you. You will pay tax as funds are distributed from the account to you. You must take at least a required minimum distribution annually from the account. Taxes are reported on your individual returns.

Even though the titling issue makes things uncertain, I would treat the account as an IRA and anticipate the tax consequences unless and until the account holder indicates otherwise.

A: In order to transfer real estate to the name of your trust, you need to have a deed prepared and recorded against the property. A preliminary change of ownership report is the form that accompanies the deed. It is a document that lets the county know whether the recording of the deed was exempt from reassessment or subject to reassessment. The form does not transfer title to your property.

Assuming the accounts are not retirement accounts, each time you open a new account you should take title in your name as trustee of your trust.

A: If you have the accounts set up as joint tenants with the child, then the account will pass to the surviving joint tenant and will not pass through your trust. Passing cash by joint tenancy does not have a tax disadvantage, but passing stock by joint tenancy may.

If the stock has appreciated since your acquisition, the the stock will have a capital gain upon its sale. The federal tax code states that when a person passes away, then the persons property gets a new tax basis to the fair market value. (The stepped up basis is limited this year). If you owned the entire account, it would result in an elimination of the tax upon your death to the beneficiaries. If you own the account in joint tenancy, then only half of the stock gets an adjustment in its tax basis, so there would still be a capital gain upon its sale.

A: California law provides for an estate plan if you do not create one. If all of your assets are community property with your spouse, then your spouse may file a summary probate proceeding to pass those assets to the surviving spouse.

Additionally, California also has community property with right of survivorship which allows you to have your spouse provide a death certificate and transfer the account to the spouse upon death.

However, most individuals fail to create community property vehicles to transfer property to their spouse. They mistakenly use joint tenancy titling. Joint tenancy titling will pass assets to your spouse at death, but it eliminates a tax advantage of a full stepped up basis in the asset at the first spouse's death. Using joint tenancy titling could result in a significant tax difference to the surviving spouse upon sale of assets after the first spouse's death.

Even if titling is correctly done and all the benefits of community property are used, people often still use the trust agreement to transfer their assets. The most common reason is to avoid a formal probate proceeding at the death of the second spouse. Other reasons include setting up trusts for children at second death and doing tax planning to take advantage of both spouses tax exemptions.

A: Placing an Individual Retirement Account into the name of the trust during the lifetime of the contributor would cause immediate recognition of the income. A contributing person may only hold an IRA as an individual during lifetime in order to obtain tax deferral.

Assuming that she did own it as an individual, then an inherited IRA may be established upon her death. If she named the trust as the beneficiary, then the inherited IRA must be taken out based upon the life expectancy of the oldest possible beneficiary. The account would stay in the name of your mother for the benefit of the name of the trust until the trustee distributes it. Upon distribution from the trust, the trustee would then create three separate inherited IRA accounts for the benefit of each beneficiary.

If she named the three of you as direct beneficiaries, then you may establish three separate inherited IRA accounts. You would still maintain the account in your mother's name for the benefit of each specific beneficiary. If you then wish to cash it and recognize the income, you may do so after transfer. This will allow each individual to properly recognize their share of the tax as each account will be treated as an account of that beneficiary.

If she did not name a beneficiary, then the bank will treat the beneficiary as the estate of your mother. Since this asset is under $100,000 in value and you stated that all other assets are in the trust, you could do a summary probate proceeding and have the account transferred to inherited IRA accounts for the benefit of each of you. The difference is that you must cash out the entire account within five years.

If you are having difficulty, your first step should be to ask to speak with a manager to find out why the bank is unwilling to transfer the account to inherited IRAs. If further action is needed, you should consult an attorney to assist you.

A: In order to make a change to a trust, the trust agreement usually provides for a written amendment to the trust agreement. An amendment would only amend the provisions that you are changing. An amendment and restatement of the trust agreement is when you decide to replace the trust agreement in its entirety. A person restates a trust when the amendments are substantial and it is easier to create a new document instead of changing each individual paragraph.

If you name the charities as beneficiaries of your trust then the charities have a right to enforce their gift from the trust agreement. If you also want to make sure that the trustee cannot otherwise abscond with the funds of the trust estate before distribution, you may require that the trustee be bonded. Bonding a trustee requires the trustee to purchase a surety bond to safeguard the funds of the trust. The payment for the surety bond is paid from your trust estate.

As an extra step, you can notify the charities during your lifetime that you have provided for a legacy gift to them so that they are aware of your intentions.

A: A trustee may elect to either sell the assets of the trust and distribute the proceeds of the sale to the beneficiary or distribute the assets in kind by re-titling the assets into the name of the beneficiary. To re-title the stocks and bonds, the trustee would work with the broker holding the stock and bond account to open new accounts for the beneficiares and transfer the stocks and bonds to the new accounts. If the stocks are not held in a brokerage accounts, the trustee would work directly with the transfer agent of the specific stock or bond to replace the old stock with stock titled in the name of the beneficiary.

A: The law requires that funding of the subtrusts be completed within a reasonable time. If there was a mistake in allocation, the error should be corrected as soon as it is discovered. The trustee's potential liability relates to the remainder beneficiaries of the irrevocable trust. If they believe they were damaged by the error, then they may have a cause of action against the trustee. The statute of limitations would be to file an action within 3 years of discovery. Generally, the statute would run when the trustee makes the beneficiaries aware of the adjustment to the trust or provides an accounting to the beneficiaries to make them aware of the adjustment to the trust. The trust instrument may shorten the statute of limitations to object to an accounting to a period no less than 180 days. The trustee may also elect to have the accounting approved by the court. A beneficiary would be bound by the court order if the beneficiary received notice of the hearing.

With regard to tax issues, you need to confirm that all income tax was properly reported based upon the corrected error in funding. You should consult a tax professional to assist with reviewing the irrevocable trust's tax returns in light of the corrected funding.

A: In California, as long as the property outside of the trust that does not otherwise pass by beneficiary designation or property titling is less than $100,000 in value, you do not have to formally probate your will. If the bonds are the only assets outside of the trust, you do not need to re-title. If the bonds result in your assets outside of the trust exceeding $100,000, you may consider re-titling a portion of the bonds to make sure that your probate estate is less than the $100,000.

If the joint ownership has a right of survivorship, the issue of assets outside of the trust will be an issue at second death. There should be no formal probate at first death if the bonds pass to the survivor.

A: A transfer of title from one person to another is a gift. The gift transfers the tax basis of the original person who provided the gift. Therefore, your husband would have received the original tax basis (or purchase price plus improvements) that his mother held in the property.

If his mother owns her joint tenancy interest at death, it will receive a step-up in basis to the fair market value as to her half of the property only. However, in 2010, only $1.3 million of the decedent's property receives an adjustment to basis.

It is generally the loss of the step-up in basis that results in individuals choosing estate planning mechanisms such as a trust or a will to transfer property at death vs. using the joint tenancy titling to transfer at death.