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Trust amendment form

hey Paul Rabelais here I'm an estate planning attorney and I'm here to talk about how to amend modify or revoke your revocable living trust so across my state Louisiana and really across the country many many people millions of people have set up revocable living trusts in an attempt to simplify their estate settlement when they pass away the thought process is if things are in your name they're frozen when you pass away your survivors have to hire lawyers go through a court process attorney involvement delay expense so many people in an attempt to avoid that they establish what we call their revocable living trust things in a trust when you pass away don't have to go through that court process it simplifies the estate settlement so occasionally sometimes people set up their living trust and and and in their trust instrument it's dictated who gets the trust assets when they die who's going to be the trustee in charge of those distributions so the trust really replaces the will sometimes family circumstances change after someone sets up their trust and they want to either amend or modify or revoke their trust how do you do it well let's first talk about what kind of amendments are typical sometimes people want to amend who they designate as the beneficiaries of their trust maybe they said I leave everything to my three children or the three children are the principle beneficiaries of my trust they will receive the trust assets when they die and they change them their mind and maybe they want to leave something to the grandchildren or some other third party so that's a potential amendment sometimes people want to change how they leave assets to a beneficiary maybe in their original trust they said I don't want that beneficiary to get his or her portion in a lump sum I want to make sure it's doled out to him over a period of years and maybe the circumstances change where now the person who set up the trust I let them have it they've shown some maturity or maybe someone wants to change who the successor trustee is or trustees are of their trust who's going to be in charge of that you know distribution of assets to the beneficiary so those are common trust amendments so how do you change it well what you don't do is you don't pull out a pen or a pencil and just start writing on your trust instrument probably worth mentioning that in our Louisiana will law there's some really kind of sneaky and tricky provisions on how certain will provisions can be revoked and what it takes to amend a will provision in one of the forms of a will prescribed under our Louisiana law but there's different videos and different you know information on changing a will we're talking about changing in a trust and and really it's written in our trust code what the requirement is in fact what it says in our trust code is a modification division termination or revocation of a trust shall be by authentic act or by act under private signature executed in the presence of two witnesses and duly acknowledged by the person who makes the modification division or termination or by the affidavit of one of the attesting witnesses it's a lot of words there but I will tell you that most trust amendments are done by authentic act you say what's an authentic act I gotta go to another book an authentic act is a writing executed before a notary public or other officer authorized to perform that function in the presence of two witnesses and signed by each party who executed it by each witness and by each notary public before whom it was executed so that's your typical trust amendment many legal documents real estate transfers are done by authentic act it's all typed up special language in there signed you know by the person who's making the trust amendment notary to witnesses that takes care of it yeah we do have this provision which allows for changes to be made by act under private signature but that's a little more complicated authentic Act is the way to go I will tell you also that we have a provision on our trust code that says a modification or revocation of a trust may also be by Testament so don't see that much when people incorporate an amendment to their trust in their will mmm don't see that much so authentic act is the way to go make sure you you get some help this is not a do-it-yourself item get some help get it done right the first time there's a lot of wording a lot of formalities that have to be you know met and and done just right so find an attorney in your area or someone you can work with who's non nominal knowledgeable and trusts and amendments and all the formalities and just get it right the first time the consequences of not getting it right are you know really things being messed up when you pass away you can't fix it then and you know you're it could be an error that could cause you know many many hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more or less in going the wrong way and really could cause some relationships to turn sour again don't you know you know no you made that mistake until it's too late so make make sure you work with an attorney and get it right the first time I'm Paul rebel I hope that helps in your discovery process of how to amend or revoke your revocable living trust you all have a great day