If you are going to put the property into a will, you don't need to do anything in regards to the title as that will be addressed in the probate proceedings. However, if you did a proper estate plan and had real-estate, I would advise you to set up a trust. Now if you are a single person, it's just a simple trust and I would advise you to set up a revocable living trust, sometimes called inter vivos trust, which doesn't vest until you die so that you can actually change that up until the day that you die. So if you have real-estate, it is advisable to set up a trust in California and title the real-estate into the name of the trust so that way it could just seamlessly past to the intended beneficiary. That's a term called funding the trust.

Most people will prepare deeds. When I do a trust for somebody, I prepare the deeds for them and just have them sign off on them and then we record them so that way the property is in the name of the trust. For example, let's say I've got a property and it is titled in my name and I want to set up a trust. If I let the title alone in my name, it's not going to be in the trust, it's not considered a part of the trust and I would need to probate it.

So, what I would do at the time of preparing the trust is prepare a deed, either a grant deed, a quit claim deed or a deed of some form, transferring title from me to the Russo Family Trust. Then, the Russo Family Trust would own the property at which point in time when I passed away, all they really need is the death certificate to get the property transferred to whoever I wanted it to go to.