When the Trust and the Business Weren’t Pointing the Same Direction

A trust on paper, not in practice

The owner, 58, runs an electrical contracting business and is thinking seriously about an eventual sale or transition within the next several years. Years earlier, an attorney had drafted a revocable living trust as part of a broader estate plan. What nobody had done since was actually check whether it was funded — whether the assets that were supposed to be inside the trust were actually titled that way.

Three gaps between the plan on paper and the plan in practice

• The trust was never actually funded — his business interest and several key personal assets were still titled in his own name, not the trust, meaning they’d go through probate exactly like there was no trust at all.
• Business succession and personal estate planning had never been coordinated — if something happened to him unexpectedly, ownership transfer of the business could stall in probate, disrupting operations at the exact moment stability mattered most.
• Beneficiary designations hadn’t been reviewed since the trust was created — retirement accounts and life insurance still named old beneficiaries, creating direct conflicts with what the trust document intended.

Making the trust actually do what it was designed to do

• Completed a Trust Funding Plan — retitled applicable personal assets and coordinated with his attorney on how the business ownership interest should transfer.
• Aligned beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance to match the trust’s actual intent, eliminating the conflicts.
• Built a Document Readiness Checklist ahead of a follow-up attorney meeting focused specifically on business succession language in the estate documents.
• Created an Executor Grab-and-Go Packet noting where business records, the buy-sell agreement, and key contacts are kept.