What Assets Should Not Be in a Revocable Trust?

1. What Should You Never Put in a Trust?

Five kinds of assets should not be retitled into a revocable trust. Each one reaches the right people through its own paperwork instead.

1. IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s and other retirement accounts. Federal law defines an IRA as an account for the exclusive benefit of one individual. A living person’s account cannot be moved into a trust, and an attempt is treated as withdrawing the whole balance, so a $600,000 IRA becomes $600,000 of taxable income in one year. You name a beneficiary on the custodian’s form instead, which can be your spouse, your children, or the trust itself. Our guide to naming a trust as your IRA beneficiary explains when the trust belongs on that form and when it does not.
2. Health savings accounts. An HSA also belongs to one person. At your death, federal law lets a surviving spouse named as beneficiary keep it as the spouse’s own HSA. Anyone else, including a trust, has the full balance counted as income in the year of death. Name your spouse first.
3. A child’s custodial account. Money in a Florida UTMA account already belongs to the child, with you as custodian. Moving it into your trust would be moving someone else’s property. A 529 college plan has its own successor-owner line on the plan form, which is where it is coordinated.
4. Cars. A car loses value, needs insurance and registration in the owner’s name, and is often sold or replaced. Most families leave it out and let the backup will or a co-owner on the title handle it.
5. Property that a contract restricts. An LLC operating agreement or a partnership agreement can limit who may own an interest. The transfer to your trust is usually allowed, but the agreement is read before the assignment is signed, and S corporation stock needs its own check, covered on our page on whether a trust can own S corporation stock.

Life insurance and annuities sit in between. The policy usually stays in your name, and the trust is named as beneficiary only where someone needs the money managed.

2. What Assets Should Be Put in a Trust?

Anything that would go through probate if it were in your name alone at death belongs in the trust. The list is usually short.

• Your Florida home, by a new deed from you to yourself as trustee. The homestead rules that follow it are in section 4.
• Other real estate, including a rental or a second home. Property in another state matters most, because a house in North Carolina left outside the trust needs a second probate there. Our page on trusts for out-of-state property covers that case.
• Bank and brokerage accounts that have no beneficiary named, either retitled or pointed at the trust with a pay-on-death or transfer-on-death form.
• Business interests, such as LLC membership units, by a written assignment.
• Valuable personal property, such as art, jewelry or a coin collection, by an assignment signed with the trust.

The step-by-step paperwork for each item, including who at the bank to call and what the deed has to say, is in our guide to funding a trust in Florida.

3. Should I Put My Bank Accounts in a Revocable Trust?

Yes, in one of two ways, and both keep the money out of probate. You can retitle the account into the trust, so it reads in your name as trustee. Or you can leave the account in your own name and name the trust as the pay-on-death beneficiary, which Florida law recognizes for checking, savings and certificate of deposit accounts. Many people retitle the larger savings and brokerage accounts and use a pay-on-death form on the everyday checking account, which leaves the debit card and the checks unchanged.

Deposit insurance is not lost by using a trust. Since April 1, 2024, the FDIC insures trust accounts at $250,000 for each beneficiary, counting up to five, for a maximum of $1,250,000 per owner at each bank. A widow whose trust names three children has $750,000 of coverage at one bank, three times what an account in her name alone would carry. Opening the account is covered in how to open a trust account.

4. Can a Florida Homestead Go in a Revocable Trust?

Yes, and in Florida the home is usually the first asset funded, because it is the asset most likely to go through probate otherwise. Four Florida rules follow the house into the trust.

1. The property tax exemption stays. Florida law treats a person holding a beneficial interest for life under an instrument as having equitable title for the homestead exemption, so a trust that lets you live in the home for life keeps the homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes cap on assessment increases. Some county property appraisers ask to see the trust or a short affidavit.
2. Creditor protection stays. The constitutional protection from forced sale continues for a homestead held in the owner’s own revocable trust, which Florida’s appeals courts confirmed after an early bankruptcy decision held otherwise.
3. The limits on who can inherit still apply. If you are married or have a minor child, Florida’s Constitution restricts who can receive the home at your death, and putting it in a trust does not change that. A trust that tries to leave the home elsewhere is overridden, and title passes as the law directs at the moment of death. The rule on homestead in a trust covers it.
4. Your spouse signs the deed. A married owner needs the spouse to join in a deed of homestead, even a deed into the owner’s own trust.

The mortgage is not called due by a transfer to your own revocable trust while you remain a beneficiary and occupy the home, under the federal Garn-St Germain Act. Our guide to a Florida homestead in a revocable trust covers each rule in depth, and putting your house in a trust walks through the deed.

5. Should a Married Couple Move Joint Property Into a Trust?

Sometimes not, and this is the Florida rule most online checklists miss. Property a married couple owns together as tenants by the entirety, which is how Florida treats a home bought as husband and wife and often a joint account, cannot be reached by a creditor of only one spouse. A trust is not a married couple, and a 2020 federal bankruptcy decision in Florida held that a couple’s joint revocable trust cannot hold property as tenants by the entirety. The later decisions have not settled the point. A doctor whose joint brokerage account was protected from a claim against him alone can lose that protection by moving the account into the trust.

For the home the concern is smaller, because the homestead exemption protects a primary residence on its own. For a rental, a second home or a large joint account, the choice between probate avoidance and creditor protection is a real one, and our page on tenancy by the entirety sets out the rule. Each spouse can also revoke a joint trust as to the property that spouse contributed, which is one reason a joint trust keeps a record of who put in what.

6. What Is the Downside of Putting Assets in a Trust?

A revocable trust avoids probate and plans for incapacity, and it does nothing else. The limits are worth knowing before you sign.

• No protection from your own creditors. Florida law makes revocable trust property reachable by the grantor’s creditors during life to the same extent as if you owned it directly.
• No Medicaid protection. Assets in your revocable trust count for Medicaid as if they were in your name. A Medicaid asset protection trust is a different, irrevocable instrument.
• Paperwork. Every deed and account has to be retitled, and a lender refinancing the house may ask you to take it out of the trust and put it back.
• Lost entireties protection for a married couple’s joint property, as section 5 explains.

7. What Happens to Property Not in a Trust?

Property left in your own name at death, with no beneficiary or co-owner, goes through probate. A well-drafted plan includes a pour-over will, a backup will that sends anything you forgot into the trust, but the will only works through the probate court. A house deeded to nobody, or an account with no pay-on-death form, lands in exactly the process the trust was signed to avoid. The probate guide covers what that costs and how long it runs. For a successor trustee who finds the trust was never funded, the successor trustee guide covers the first steps.

What Does It Cost to Set Up and Fund a Trust?

The Complete Trust Plan is a flat fee from $3,200, and $4,500 for a couple, and includes the trust, the pour-over will, the power of attorney, the health-care documents and a deed putting your home into the trust. A revocable trust drafted on its own is a flat fee from $2,400, and $3,200 for a couple. Each additional property deed is a flat fee from $199, and a deed into an existing trust you already have is a flat fee from $550. Reviewing and restating a trust drafted years ago is a flat fee quoted at consult. Recording and other government costs are additional and passed through at cost. Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The retiree with most of her money in an IRA. A 72-year-old widow has a $150,000 condo, $60,000 in savings and a $700,000 IRA. The trust holds the condo and the savings. The IRA stays in her name, and the beneficiary form names the trust so her grandson’s share is managed until he is older.

The couple with a rental. A married couple owns their Boca Raton home and a rental duplex, both as husband and wife. The home goes into the joint trust. For the duplex they weigh probate avoidance against the entireties protection they hold today, and they choose after the consult rather than by default.

The son who found the trust unfunded. A father signed a trust in 2015 and never signed the deed. At his death the trust is empty and the house goes through probate under the pour-over will. The trust still controls who inherits, but the family pays for both documents.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §736.0505 (annotated)(1)(a) (revocable trust property subject to the settlor’s creditors during life); §736.0602 (annotated)(2)(b) (each settlor of a joint trust may revoke as to that settlor’s contribution); §736.1109(1) (a trust devise of homestead that violates the constitutional limits passes as §732.401 provides); §736.0403 (annotated)(2)(b) (testamentary aspects of a Florida revocable trust require will formalities).
• Art. X, §4, Fla. Const. (homestead protection from forced sale; limits on devise and the spouse’s joinder); Fla. Stat. §196.041(2) (a beneficial interest for life is equitable title for the homestead exemption); Fla. Stat. §655.82 (pay-on-death accounts); §689.01 (two subscribing witnesses on a deed). Retrieved September 30, 2026.
• Engelke v. Estate of Engelke, 921 So. 2d 693 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006) (homestead held in a revocable trust keeps its protection); In re Givans, 623 B.R. 635 (Bankr. M.D. Fla. 2020) (a joint revocable trust cannot hold property as tenants by the entirety); Rollins v. Alvarez, 792 So. 2d 695, 696 n.2 (Fla. 5th DCA 2001).
• 26 U.S.C. §408(a) (an IRA is for the exclusive benefit of an individual); 26 U.S.C. §223(f)(8) (HSA passing to a spouse continues as the spouse’s; to anyone else, the balance is income at death); 12 U.S.C. §1701j-3(d)(8) (no due-on-sale acceleration for a transfer to the borrower’s own trust). Retrieved September 30, 2026.
• FDIC, Your Insured Deposits (trust accounts insured at $250,000 per eligible beneficiary, up to $1,250,000 per owner per bank, effective April 1, 2024). fdic.gov (retrieved September 30, 2026).
• Case retold below: Bridgeview Bank Group v. Callaghan, 84 So. 3d 1154 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012). Opinion read in full; retrieved September 30, 2026.

How a Deed Into a Trust Can Change What a Creditor Can Reach

I see cases where the family did everything a checklist told them, moved every asset into the trust, and changed something they never meant to change. I also litigate deeds after they fail, which enhances the practice of drafting deeds.

One Florida appeals decision from 2012 shows the problem from an unusual side. A husband and wife bought a house in Palm Beach County in 2004, titled to them as husband and wife. Four years later the husband signed a quitclaim deed moving his half into his wife’s revocable trust, prepared by his attorney in Illinois as part of estate tax planning (perhaps because Illinois deeds do not need the two witnesses a Florida deed does). The only witness on the deed was his wife. In 2010 a bank won a judgment against the husband alone and came to Florida to collect it from the house, arguing that the move into the trust was a transfer it could undo. The court held the deed was void for lack of a second witness, so the house had never left the couple’s joint ownership as husband and wife, and a creditor of only one spouse could not touch it. The bank left with nothing from the house.

My reading of that case is that the couple were protected by the mistake. Reviewing the Florida decisions on moving a married couple’s property into a trust, I have a few take-home points.

The first is that the form of ownership is itself a protection. A Florida home or account owned by a married couple as husband and wife is beyond the reach of a creditor of one spouse, and a trust does not automatically carry that protection with it.

The second is execution. A Florida deed needs two subscribing witnesses. Avoid a deed prepared by an out-of-state lawyer or a form website without checking it against Florida’s rules, because a deed that fails leaves the property wherever it was.

The third is the order of decisions. An owner can decide which property goes into the trust after asking who might ever have a claim against one spouse, and every Complete Trust Plan I prepare, flat fee from $3,200, includes that review before the funding deed is signed. One limit is worth stating plainly. The court never decided what would have happened if the deed had been valid, so the case does not say whether the bank could have reached the house through the trust.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on September 30, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.