My mother passed away a few months ago and I’m needing to transfer minerals owned by her trust to an existing LLC. The LLC is owned by the beneficiaries of the trust and I’m the Successor Trustee. I know I need to file an Affidavit of Successor Trustee and deed, but I have just a few questions regarding this:
1. When attaching the Death Certificate to the Affidavit, is it okay to attach a copy of an original certified copy or does it need to be an actual original certified copy?
2. Is it okay to redact her Social Security Number from the Death Certificate or is that even necessary?
3. When deeding the property, should the Grantor be listed as “my name, Successor Trustee of the ------------- Trust” or should it just be “my name, Trustee of the --------------- Trust”? When the property was originally deeded into the trust it was only listed on the deeds as “The --------------- Trust”, with no mention of a Trustee. However a Memorandum of Trust was also filed in each county where the property is owned. This is in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Mississippi.
Randy: your questions can’t be answered without reviewing the documents involved, such as the trust and the LLC documents. Truly, this really is not a do-it-yourself project. Consult a probate attorney in each state to be sure it’s done correctly. If it’s not done right, you may be creating huge (and expensive) headaches for yourself and your heirs in the future. The modest fee an attorney will charge is like payment of a premium on an insurance policy to make sure all documents are correct.
In Oklahoma the SSN & date of birth should be redacted or partially redacted. This sounds like a quick review of the trust and creation of an appropriate affidavit & deed is required. Aimee is correct in stating that this should be attorney reviewed. It is difficult to see this costing more than a few hundred dollars to see that it is done correctly for each state.
If the attorney bills at $300 an hour, which is not a high rate, the fee is going to be more than a few hundred dollars in each state since the attorney needs to review the trust, prepare the deed or deeds, and communicate with the client and handle the recording.