Transfer every critical asset into your living trust and protect your family from costly estate planning mistakes.
Based on: How To Fund Your Living Trust (5 Items Experts Agree Need To Be Transferred) by Toby Mathis Esq | Tax Planning & Asset Protection
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What if the estate planning document you paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to create is completely useless right now? Not because it was drafted wrong — but because it's empty. Toby Mathis, a tax and asset protection attorney with nearly 30 years of experience and over 1,200 educational videos, calls this the suitcase problem: you bought a beautiful suitcase, had your name put on it, and then left all your clothes at home. A living trust that hasn't been funded is a legal container with nothing inside. And the hard truth is that most people who have a trust have never actually transferred their assets into it.
Here's what that means for your family. If you become incapacitated tomorrow, your successor trustee can't manage accounts that aren't in the trust. If you pass away before your spouse, your assets could flow outright to them, and if they remarry, your children could be legally disinherited without anyone doing anything wrong. These aren't worst-case scenarios — Toby has seen these exact situations play out in real families. The mistake isn't malicious. It's just that nobody told them the trust had to be packed.
Now imagine the opposite. Your real estate is titled in your trust's name. Your bank and brokerage accounts are properly retitled. Your LLCs are assigned into the trust through a simple two-page document. Your valuables are covered by a general assignment. Your successor trustee can step in immediately, without court involvement, without a judge, without your family playing detective while you're in a hospital bed. That is what a funded trust actually looks like — and it changes everything for the people you love.
Toby Mathis has helped thousands of families get this right through Anderson Business Advisors, and this checklist distills his exact five-category framework into a clear, step-by-step action plan you can start using today. It covers every asset category — real estate, bank accounts, business interests, investment accounts, and personal property — plus critical warnings about what not to put in your trust, how to protect your kids' inheritance after they receive it, and how to keep your trust current as your life changes.
This checklist is your packing list. Use it to make sure your suitcase is actually full when it counts most.
Every checklist item comes with actionable notes to guide you — things like "Don't forget to do this before you start," "Avoid this common mistake," or "Set a reminder for 30 days out." Nothing vague, just clear next steps.
+ 20 more action items inside...
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