Make your New York living trust.

How it works

1. 1

   Answer a few questions

   About your assets, trustees, and beneficiaries.

2. 2

   Download your trust

   A complete, personalized revocable living trust, formatted for New York.

3. 3

   Sign and fund

   Sign with acknowledgment before notary OR two witnesses. Fund the trust by transferring assets into its name.

Joint or individual

Married couples can make one joint New York 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 New York living trust

Trust must be in writing and either acknowledged before a notary OR signed before two witnesses (EPTL 7-1.17)

Tenancy by the entirety

New York recognizes tenancy by the entirety (Real property, and since January 1, 1996 also the shares of a cooperative apartment corporation allocated to an apartment or unit together with the appurtenant proprietary lease, which is unusual: most states limit the tenancy to real property, and a New York co-op is personal property. EPTL §6-2.2(b) and §6-2.2(c) make the tenancy the default for a disposition to a married couple unless the instrument expressly declares a joint tenancy or a tenancy in common, while §6-2.2(a) makes any other disposition to two or more persons a tenancy in common unless expressly declared a joint tenancy. Under §6-2.2(d), grantees who are described in the disposition as spouses but are not legally married to each other take a joint tenancy instead.). 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 New York 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 New York real estate into the trust

To transfer New York 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 County Clerk of the county where the property is located (in a county that has a register, such as the New York City counties served by the City Register, the register is the recording officer instead; N.Y. Real Prop. Law §§290, 291). The trust does not control real estate unless the deed transfer is recorded.