Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: a living trust controls only the assets actually retitled into it. Signing the trust does nothing to your house, your accounts or your car. An unfunded trust is an expensive folder — and the pour-over will that is supposed to catch what you missed still goes through probate, which is the thing the trust was bought to avoid.
The failure this page exists to prevent
People pay for a trust, sign a stack of documents, and stop. The trust is real and valid. It is also empty. Assets pass by title and by beneficiary designation, not by intention, so anything still in your own name at death is handled as though the trust did not exist.
The pour-over will does not rescue it
A pour-over will directs anything left in your name into the trust. It works — but it is a will, and a will has to be admitted to probate before it moves anything:
to be effective to prove the transfer of any property or to nominate an executor, a will must be declared to be valid by a statement of informal probate by the registrar, or an adjudication of probate by the court
— Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 14-3102 (Uniform Probate Code § 3-102, “Necessity of Order of Probate for Will”)
What we could not confirm. We wanted a court self-help page using the words pour-over will and could not find one — the California courts’ probate self-help pages do not use the term, and a dozen county superior court sites returned 403 or 404. So we publish the underlying rule instead, from a state probate code: a will must be admitted to probate before it is effective to transfer property. That necessarily governs a pour-over will, because a pour-over will is a will. It is not a pour-over-labelled source, and we would rather say so than imply we found one.
What to fund, in the order that matters
| Asset | How it gets in |
|---|---|
| Your house | A new deed, recorded. And the mortgage question has a federal answer |
| Bank and brokerage accounts | Retitled with the institution, which will ask for a certification of trust rather than the whole document |
| Retirement accounts | Never retitled. They pass by beneficiary designation, and retitling one is a taxable distribution |
| Life insurance and annuities | Beneficiary designation, not retitling — and naming a trust has consequences worth checking first |
| Vehicles | Sometimes worth it, often not — depends on your state |
The retirement-account row is the one that causes real damage. Retitling an IRA into a trust is not a transfer, it is a distribution — the whole balance becomes taxable. The correct route is the beneficiary designation, and it is a different form entirely.
Funding is a habit, not an event
Assets bought after the trust is signed are not in it. A new account, a refinance that requires taking the house back out, an inheritance — each one lands in your own name unless someone puts it in the trust. The trust that was fully funded in 2019 is partially funded now.
An annual look at what the trust actually holds is the habit that keeps it working.
Related: which trust you need · what to leave out · the deed alternative.
General information drawn from federal and state statute, not legal advice. Deeds, trust law and recording requirements are STATE law and differ; a deed prepared wrongly can cloud title, trigger a transfer tax, or affect a title policy. A living trust only controls the assets actually retitled into it – which is the entire point of this section of the site.
One beneficiary cannot sign for themselves and needs the trust built around that — how a pet trust actually holds and spends the money.