Should your automobiles be transferred to your Oklahoma revocable living trust?

It is a good question.

The short answer is “yes,“ automobiles should be transferred to a person’s Oklahoma revocable trust, to receive the full benefits of Oklahoma estate planning. Below is a bit longer explanation:

Purpose of Estate Planning with a Revocable Trust

One of the purposes of doing estate planning with a revocable living trust is allowing a person’s family to avoid Oklahoma probate when the person passes away. The trust helps a person avoid probate because assets that typically force a probate case are owned by the trust when a person passes away (more on that here).

 
For example, if an individual owns real property at the time of his death, titled solely in his name, with no mechanism to pass the title to the property (such as a transfer-on-death deed), the real property is going to have to be probated to change the title to the heirs.
Contrasting that scenario with the revocable trust scenario, upon a person’s death where his revocable trust owns real property, the trust can continue as the owner and eventually transfer title to the property to the beneficiaries. Since a change in title is accomplished by the trust, there is no need to do a probate case based on the real property.

Automobiles and Revocable Trust

Automobiles come up a little bit short in terms of forcing an estate to be probated. There are scenarios where one can change the title to an automobile following a person’s death, by taking the original title to a tag agent and demonstrating that they are the beneficiaries entitled to receive the automobile. This showing of beneficiary status is usually accomplished with a last will and testament. This method is inconsistent and sometimes varies from tag agent to tag agent, so I do not recommend this method to my clients.

Instead, I recommend that my clients transfer title to their automobiles to their revocable living trust by signing the back of the original title at the tag agent. It’s a relatively simple process and allows people to get the full benefit of the revocable living trust.

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."