Estate & probate
Trust funding
Trust funding is the work of actually transferring your accounts and property into the name of your trust, which is what turns a signed trust document into something that has any effect.
Also called funding a trust · re-titling
Signing the trust creates an empty container. Funding means changing the registration on bank and brokerage accounts, recording a new deed for real property, and reviewing which retirement accounts and policies should name the trust as beneficiary and which should not.
It is unglamorous administrative work, it takes a few weeks of back-and-forth with institutions, and it is the single most commonly skipped step in estate planning. An attorney who drafts and does not follow through has delivered half a job, which is why this is a named stage of the 4D process rather than an assumed afterthought.
What it does not do
Funding is not automatic and nobody does it on your behalf. If you cannot tell from your own statements whether the trust is named, the answer is almost certainly that it is not, and the estate will go through probate anyway, having paid for a trust designed to avoid it.
This entry is a general explanation, not advice for your situation, and it deliberately avoids thresholds and figures, because those are the part most likely to be out of date. Reviewed August 27, 2026. If a decision turns on any of it, ring the office rather than relying on a page.
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From definition to your situation
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