Ian Simons

Riverside County Official Form Assistant

 License No. 489

951 525 1340

4193 Flat Rock, Riverside, CA, 92505 

Building 200.

 Living Trust Creation 🏁

     Free Courthouse Drop Off  🏁

All Living Trust Package(s) Now Include Recording and Notarizations

$380 Trust with One Property Deed & Pour Over Will

$ 440 Trust with One Property Deed, Pour Over Will and Power of Attorney

$ 550 Trust with One Property Deed, Pour Over Will, P.O.A and Advance Directive

$770 Trust with One Property Deed, Pour Over Will, P.O.A, Advance Directive and 401k funding

$ 125 Per Additional deed & optional personal property asset funding

Transferring assets to the trust is called “funding” the trust, which is done by recording a new deed on behalf of your trust. A funded living trust is one in which the settlor(s), have transferred ownership of their major assets into their trust.

Why Us

Thunder Stone Paralegal is a team of licensed and bonded LDAs (Legal Document Assistants). We aren't attorneys, but we are permitted by the county to offer assistance with the completion of living trust documents. In additional our LDA accreditation allows for an EP licensing agreement, which ensures all client documents are compliant with current state and federal regulations.

Besides offering a life time guarantee on generational documents, our goal is to provide clients with affordable estate planning options while not compromising the labor intensive vetting each plan requires. 

Our interview process results in a trust catered to clients based on their individual and family needs. After the intake process is completed, the client's selections are typed up and placed within the applicable provisions. In addition, a new property deed will be issued. 

If you would like to see one of our various sample trusts, we're happy to show you, and demonstrate why you can rely on us for your estate planning needs.  

Legal services for Living Trusts are sequential procedures.  When you setup a trust, this is the first step, not the last. Yet many online services, market the first step as the only step.  

For example: Let's say you Setup a Working Trust

You truly won't know how it works until the first Settlor dies. The death of a Settlor is also when many revocable trusts are supposed to convert to irrevocable trusts.  Consequently the "1 on 1 legal assistance" purchased through online vendors to prepare the trust will have long expired.

Living Trusts are legal entitles. They weren't designed to be efficient, they were designed to be comprehensive solutions to death and marriage.

Our Process

Our interview ensures we hit all the marks when it comes to probate avoidance and asset distribution.

It's important the trustor's beneficiaries, executors and trustees aren't left in the dark. A recent 2022 survey of active trustees showed only 3% of participants contained knowledge of the term "lodging the will",  a required step by trustees.

Living Trusts & Their History

Despite most people not knowing what a revocable living trust is, it is actually not some new invention from a few years ago. It has actually been around longer than gunpowder let alone being a new invention in the last century. A revocable living trust is simply a trust set up by a person during their life that lists what happens to the property in the trust after death.

The original use for living trusts was in England in the 1400s and beyond was to prevent the King from making accusations against a nobleman for the purpose of confiscating the nobleman’s property. (Apparently, this was a fairly common practice.) To prevent their families from losing everything, noblemen put their assets into a revocable living trust so even if they lost their freedom, or even their lives, the King couldn’t legally get to their property. While the Crown was not happy about this, they upheld the High Court’s rulings that revocable living trusts were valid and would prevent the King from confiscating property any time they pleased.

The first revocable living trust in the Americas was created for Francis Fauquier, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, in 1765.

"When the lord hands me death, hand my estate liberty"

Francis Fauquier

Since the days of Francis Fauquier, many different types of trusts have come into existence. From special purpose trusts for guns and pets to "intentionally defective" trusts for tax efficiency, the list is too expansive to detail on any one page. The great thing about trusts is that they can be anything you want them to be, given certain perimeters set by law. For most of us,  this centers around ensuring our family is taken care of in the event of death or incapacity. Whether your an individual, traditional or blended family, this can be easier said then done due to the many possible and unpredictable circumstances that occur and reoccur in today's world. After our 7th year in the industry, we've seen a lot changes, and strive to stay up to date with latest policy updates that effect our client's estate planning packages. 

Families with Medi-Cal Recipients

When a Medi-Cal recipient has received benefits at age 55 or older and passes away, the state can make a claim for reimbursement, or “recovery”, from the recipient’s estate. Beginning in 2017 under SB 833, however, the “estate” from which the state can recover Medi-Cal benefits paid on behalf of a recipient was limited to a person’s probate estate. As described later in this overview, property placed into a living trust are considered non-probate assets and are thus exempt from Medi-Cal recovery. While SB 833 also disallows Medi-Cal recovery from a surviving spouse’s estate, property in a joint trust will remain in the trust – and thus continue to be a non-probate asset exempt from Medi-Cal recovery – until the surviving spouse passes away

We offer affordable options and payment plans. 

What is a Living Trust?

A Living Trust is a legal tool for financial planning that allows a person (Trustee) to hold another person’s (Settlor's) property for the benefit of someone else (Beneficiary). Unlike a testamentary trust, a Living Trust goes into effect during the settlor's lifetime.

In most cases, the settlor, trustee, and beneficiary are the same person (at least until that person dies or becomes incompetent). In other words, if you set up a Living Trust, you can be the settlor, the trustee and the beneficiary of the trust.

You keep full control over the property and have the right to use and spend that property as you please up until death, and even after death in certain cases.


Top Three advantages of a Living Trust?

The most common reasons people set up a Living Trust are:
1. To  avoid Probate.

2. To ensure a disabled beneficiary does not lose their benefits upon any type of inheritance, even if the disability has not yet presented itself

3. Peace of Mind

If all your property is in trust when you die (or become incompetent), then legally you don’t own anything in your name. This means, if you die, no probate (formal court administration of a decedent's estate) is needed to pass your property on to your beneficiaries.

Or if you become incompetent, no conservatorship (formal court proceedings to administer an incompetent person's assets) is needed to manage your property.

In either case, the person that you name in your trust as the successor trustee takes over.

If you die, the successor trustee can distribute the trust property according to your wishes without having to go to probate court to authorize the distribution.

If you become incompetent, the successor trustee can manage the property for your benefit without having to go to court for a conservatorship and without ongoing court supervision.

Tax Planning:

A Living Trust can help avoid or reduce estate taxes, gift taxes and income taxes, too. Your tax savings can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in some circumstances.

Like a Will and a testamentary trust, a Living Trust lets you decide specifically what will happen to your property after you die.

You can also use a trust to control how your beneficiaries will spend their inheritance (to reduce the risk they may "blow it" on expensive vacations, cars, gambling, etc.).

Protection against Creditors:

Sometimes trusts can give assets to the beneficiaries and protect those assets from the beneficiaries' creditors.

But a Living Trust does not shelter the settlor from creditors. A creditor of the settlor has the same right to go after the trust property as if the settlor still owned the assets in his or her own name.

Privacy:

A trust is not a public record. So, the general public or anyone who is not a beneficiary does not have a right to know about the assets in your trust.

The only exception is that when you die, the successor trustee must give all of the named beneficiaries and all your heirs at law (the relatives who would have the right to inherit from you if you had died without a Will) the right to ask for and get a copy of the trust.




If you have questions regarding estate planning & Trusts, please feel free to call with questions.

951 525 1340