Re: revocable living trust
A competently drafted and assembled living trust package should contain instructions, guidelines, checklists and sample letters and forms to accomplish this task, without you having to pay for additional services from your attorney. "Funding" the trust simply means re-titling all your assets in the name of the trust. This means you will need to go to the DMV to transfer vehicle titles, to the County Recorder's Office to file a deed to your house, and visit or write letters to the holders of all your financial accounts to change ownership.
Perhaps your attorney did not intend to provide these services for you upon drafting and delivering your new trust, but they are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for your trust to operate completely. The bottom line is that your trust cannot say what happens to any assets that are not owned by the trust, so you MUST transfer everything to the trust for it to work for you.
I have to wonder about the quality of your trust (and of your legal counsel!) if you were not even instructed that this is the single most essential step to avoiding probate of your assets. That was, after all, the purpose of getting this done by your attorney, and he/she let you down by just handing you a document that cannot accomplish that goal without further work on your (or the attorney's) part. You can do it, though, with some basic instruction and assistance (like, for example, drafting the deed). That certainly should have been part of the services for which you already paid.
