Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: retitling an account means changing the registered owner to the trust — not adding the trust as a beneficiary. The institution will ask for a certification of trust rather than the whole document, and the one category you must never retitle is a retirement account.
Account by account
| Account | What to do |
|---|---|
| Taxable brokerage | Retitle. Usually a form and a certification of trust; the account keeps its cost basis and history |
| Savings and CDs | Retitle — but ask what happens to a CD mid-term, and check the effect on deposit insurance coverage |
| Current account | Optional. It works, but every direct debit and deposit has to be updated and some employers will not pay into a trust-titled account |
| Retirement accounts | Never retitle. It is a distribution, not a transfer, and the whole balance becomes taxable. Use the beneficiary designation instead |
| Savings bonds and physical certificates | Separate reissue processes that take longer than everything else — start them early |
What the institution will actually ask for
A certification of trust — a short sworn summary proving the trust exists and that you are trustee, without disclosing who inherits what. You should not have to hand over the full document, and in some states a bad-faith demand for it carries a cost.
Expect also: the trust’s taxpayer identification arrangement, identification for the trustees, and a new account application. A revocable trust normally uses the grantor’s own Social Security number while they are alive, so no separate number is usually needed at this stage.
The mistake that undoes the work
Adding the trust as a beneficiary of a taxable account is not the same as retitling it. A beneficiary designation passes the account at death; retitling puts it in the trust now, which is what gives the trustee authority if you become unable to manage it. For a revocable living trust the incapacity case is often the main point, and a beneficiary designation does nothing for it.
Do it in a sitting, and keep the list
Institutions vary enormously in how long this takes. Do them all at once rather than one at a time, and write down what you moved and when — that list becomes the schedule you review each year.
Related: what to fund · what to leave out.
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.