Will.com / Living trust / District of Columbia
DC · Revocable Living Trust
Make your District of Columbia living trust.
Skip probate, keep your estate private, and stay in control while you're alive. Legally valid in District of Columbia. Free to create, or add secure online document storage with the $29/year subscription.
District of Columbia living trust requirements
How it works
- 1
Answer a few questions
About your assets, trustees, and beneficiaries.
- 2
Download your trust
A complete, personalized revocable living trust, formatted for District of Columbia.
- 3
Sign and fund
Sign the trust. Fund it by transferring assets into its name (notarization strongly recommended if real estate is involved).
Joint or individual
Married couples can make one joint District of Columbia living trust that both spouses sign, in place of an individual one. The questionnaire asks which you want, and Will.com generates either.
Signing a District of Columbia living trust
No formal execution requirements beyond settlor signature; notarization strongly recommended when funding real property
Proving your District of Columbia trust without handing it over
When a bank, brokerage, title company, insurer, or transfer agent asks to see your trust, District of Columbia law lets your trustee give them a short certification of trust instead (D.C. Code §19-1310.13). It states that the trust exists, who the trustee is, and what the trustee may do. It leaves out who inherits and what each person receives, so your beneficiaries stay private.
Will.com generates the District of Columbia Certification of Trust alongside your trust, built to the contents that section requires. Sign it in front of the same notary, at the same sitting as the trust, then give out copies of the certification rather than the trust itself.
Tenancy by the entirety
District of Columbia recognizes tenancy by the entirety. It's a form of co-ownership available only to married couples. Neither spouse can convey or encumber the property acting alone, and at the first death it passes to the surviving spouse by survivorship, outside probate. Whether it also puts the property beyond the reach of a creditor of one spouse alone is a separate question the states answer differently, so confirm what the tenancy does in District of Columbia before relying on it as creditor protection. When you transfer such property into a revocable trust, you may lose whatever entireties protection it carries unless your trust is drafted to preserve it.
Funding District of Columbia real estate into the trust
To transfer District of Columbia real estate into your trust, you sign a new deed conveying the property from yourself to yourself as trustee, then record the deed with the District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds. The trust does not control real estate unless the deed transfer is recorded.
Two tiers, both private
Free: nothing leaves your browser. No account, no storage. Clear your answers whenever.
Subscription ($29/year): zero-knowledge encrypted storage. We store the ciphertext; only you hold the key. Edit and update as life changes.
Ready to create your trust?
Whatever you decide today, your family won’t have to guess. Start free, or save it to your account for $29 a year.