Re: adding trust to existing credit union accounts

[Noelle <noelle>]

After re-reading the funding section of the trust, I'm wondering 
about a couple of things.

First, whether it makes sense to designate the beneficiary of IRA's 
and 401k's as the trust.

I assume that, in general, naming the trust as the beneficiary 
cannot hurt and may end up helping since it may provide protection 
against creditors.  It looks like the only possible downside, 
according to

 https://www.thebalance.com/choosing-beneficiaries-for-iras-and-401k-3505288

is the five-year-rule for 401k's, that beneficiaries need to pull 
out all the money within 5 years.  I assume that most of that will 
be taxed as income.  But, I further assume that this would be the 
case whether the beneficiary were an individual or the trust.

Second, whether ownership for bank accounts (checking, saving) 
should be changed to the trust, or whether it's sufficient to just 
designate a beneficiary for these.  So far, we were thinking that it 
was sufficient to just change the beneficiary to be the trust, but 
the "Trust Funding Instructions" section of the estate planning 
document suggests retitling the accounts to be the trust.

I assume that changing ownership/title is preferable to simply 
changing the beneficiary?

Thanks.