Will.com / Living trust / North Carolina
NC · Revocable Living Trust
North Carolina living trust requirements.
Skip probate, keep your estate private, and stay in control while you're alive. Document generation isn’t currently available in North Carolina while we review its rules for online legal document services. The signing requirements below still apply.
Requirements at a glance
Signing a North Carolina living trust
No formal execution requirements beyond settlor signature; notarization strongly recommended when funding real property
Proving your North Carolina trust without handing it over
When a bank, brokerage, title company, insurer, or transfer agent asks to see your trust, North Carolina law lets your trustee give them a short certification of trust instead (N.C. Gen. Stat. §36C-10-1013). 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.
Tenancy by the entirety
North Carolina recognizes tenancy by the entirety (Real property, or any interest in real property, conveyed to spouses: N.C. Gen. Stat. §41-56(a) vests title in spouses as tenants by the entirety, unless a contrary intention is expressed in the conveyance, when the conveyance runs to a named individual 'and wife', 'and husband' or 'and spouse', or to two named individuals married to each other at the time of conveyance; §41-56(b) does the same for a grantor's conveyance to the grantor and the grantor's spouse; and under §41-56(d) spouses who become co-owners of a mobile home hold it as tenants by the entirety with all the incidents of an estate by the entirety in real property, whether the mobile home is classified as real or personal property). 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. Under N.C. Gen. Stat. §41-60(a)(1), property held that way is also beyond the reach of a creditor of one spouse alone while both spouses are living. 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 North Carolina real estate into the trust
To transfer North Carolina 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 Register of Deeds of the county where the property is located. The trust does not control real estate unless the deed transfer is recorded.
Document generation isn’t currently available in North Carolina.