How to Fill Out a Louisiana Revocable Living Trust Form

To fill out a Louisiana revocable living trust form, you need to identify the settlor, trustee, successor trustee, and beneficiaries by their exact legal names, describe the property going into the trust, expressly reserve your right to revoke, sign the document before a notary public and two witnesses, and then retitle your assets into the trust’s name. Louisiana’s Trust Code (La. R.S. 9:1721 and following) governs the instrument,¹ and because Louisiana follows a civil law tradition with forced heirship, a few blanks on the form carry weight they wouldn’t carry anywhere else.

Gather This Information Before You Start Writing

Most trust forms that get rejected by banks or challenged later fail because a name, address, or legal description was wrong on the day it was signed. Pull everything together first.

Full legal names and current addresses for the settlor (you), the initial trustee, and at least one successor trustee. Every name must match government-issued identification exactly. If your driver’s license says “Robert” and the form says “Bob,” financial institutions may refuse to work with the trust.
Full legal names of every beneficiary. If you’re describing a class rather than naming people, use language specific enough to avoid disputes. “My children living at my death” works; “my family” doesn’t.
An asset inventory with account numbers and institution names for bank and brokerage accounts, policy numbers for life insurance, and the full legal description from the deed for any Louisiana real estate. Street addresses alone will not transfer immovable property.
Your incapacity instructions: what triggers your successor taking over (commonly, a written opinion from one or two licensed physicians) and what the successor can do while you’re unable to act.
Your distribution plan: who gets what after your death, whether outright, in shares, or held in continuing trusts for minors.

The Provisions the Form Must Contain

Louisiana defines a trust as the relationship resulting from a transfer of title to a trustee who holds the property as a fiduciary for a beneficiary.² Four elements have to be present on the page: a settlor with capacity, a trustee, identifiable beneficiaries, and identifiable property (the “res”). An empty trust with nothing funded into it is not a functioning instrument.

Revocability Clause

This is the single most important sentence in the document. Louisiana presumes a trust is irrevocable unless you expressly reserve the right to revoke. Reserving the right to revoke automatically includes the right to amend. Ambiguous language here can leave you with an irrevocable trust you never meant to create.

Trustee and Successor Trustee

Name yourself as initial trustee if you want to keep managing your own property. Then name at least one successor. Spell out how the successor takes authority during your lifetime — most forms require written certification from one or two physicians before the successor can act on grounds of incapacity. Without that language, a court petition may be needed to replace you.

Duration

Louisiana does not allow perpetual trusts. When both the settlor and at least one income beneficiary are natural persons, the trust terminates at the later of the death of the last surviving income beneficiary or twenty years from the death of the last settlor to die. Other combinations have different rules, but a Louisiana form cannot leave property in trust forever.

Distribution Section

If you have children who may qualify as forced heirs at your death, the distribution section has to accommodate them. If you want to hold a forced heir’s share in trust rather than hand it over outright, the trust must comply with the income distribution and termination requirements of La. R.S. 9:1841.³

Forced Heirship Is the Constraint You Draft Around

Louisiana is the only state that limits how much of your estate you can give to the people you choose. Under Civil Code article 1493, your children who are 23 or younger at your death — or children of any age who are permanently incapacitated — qualify as forced heirs.⁴ A child is considered 23 or younger until they actually turn 24. Children with an inherited, incurable disease that may render them incapable of caring for themselves also qualify, even if currently capable.

The reserved portion depends on how many forced heirs you leave. With one forced heir, you can freely dispose of three-fourths of your estate; the remaining fourth is reserved. With two or more, the reserved portion rises to one-half.⁵ Trust provisions attempting to give away more than the disposable portion can be challenged and reduced after your death.

A forced heir’s share can go inside the trust, but with real restrictions. The trustee has to distribute enough income each year for that heir’s health, maintenance, support, and education. The trust’s term over the forced portion cannot exceed the heir’s lifetime, and the principal must eventually be delivered to the heir (or their own heirs) free of trust.³ If every one of your children is 24 or older and none are permanently incapacitated, forced heirship doesn’t apply and you can distribute however you want.

Signing the Form the Right Way

A Louisiana inter vivos trust can only be created in two ways: as an authentic act, or as an act under private signature that is witnessed and acknowledged.⁶ A mistake at this step invalidates the whole document.

Authentic Act

An authentic act is a writing signed before a notary public and two witnesses. Every person who signs — settlor, each witness, and the notary — must have their typed or printed name placed legibly beneath the signature.⁷ The parties do not all have to be present at the same time. Civil Code article 1833 provides that the writing need not be executed at one time or place, or before the same notary or witnesses, so long as each party signs before a notary and two witnesses.

Louisiana notaries have broader powers than notaries in most other states and can draft, prepare, and execute legal instruments including trusts.⁸ Their fees for preparing and executing a trust tend to be higher than the simple acknowledgment fees charged elsewhere, and there is no standard statewide schedule. Ask about the fee up front.

Act Under Private Signature

You can also sign the trust as a private document before two witnesses and then have it acknowledged by the settlor before a notary, or confirmed by an affidavit from one of the attesting witnesses.⁶ This route is less common because the authentic act carries stronger evidentiary weight and is harder to challenge.

Picking Witnesses

Use two competent adults who are not named as beneficiaries. Louisiana law does not list extensive witness disqualifications for trust instruments, but a witness who stands to inherit creates an obvious conflict that invites a challenge. Choose people with no financial stake in the terms.

Fund the Trust or the Form Does Nothing

Signing is half the job. Until you retitle assets into the trust’s name, it controls nothing. This is where most living trusts fail in practice.

For bank and brokerage accounts, contact each institution and ask them to retitle the account in the trust’s name, for example, “Jane Smith, Trustee of the Jane Smith Revocable Living Trust dated June 15, 2026.” Each institution has its own paperwork and will typically want a copy of the trust or the pages showing the trustee’s authority.

For Louisiana real estate, prepare a new deed transferring the property from yourself individually to yourself as trustee. The deed must contain the full legal description, not just the street address, and must be recorded in the parish where the property sits. If the trust instrument itself contains the transfer of immovable property, the entire instrument must be recorded in that parish.⁹ Most people use a separate deed and record an extract of trust instead, which keeps the full terms private.

For personal property such as vehicles, jewelry, or collectibles, a written assignment transferring ownership to the trust is usually enough. Vehicles may also need a title change through the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles.

Recording an Extract When Real Estate Is Involved

When the trust holds Louisiana real estate, you must record the trust instrument, an extract of trust, or a certified copy in each parish where the property sits.⁹ An extract gives third parties enough information to verify the trustee’s authority without exposing the full distribution plan.

The extract must be signed by the settlor or the trustee and must contain:

The formal name of the trust, if any.
A statement of whether the trust is revocable or irrevocable.
The name of each settlor and each trustee.
The name or other description of each beneficiary.
The date the trust was originally signed.
Any limitation on the trustee’s power to sell, lease, or encumber real property. A restriction on authority over immovable property that is not recited in the extract has no effect against third parties.

Parish recording fees are set by statute. A document of one to five pages costs $100. Six to twenty-five pages costs $200, and twenty-six to fifty pages costs $300. Anything over fifty pages costs $300 for the first fifty plus $5 per additional page.¹⁰ Fees apply per index, so recording in both the mortgage and conveyance records means paying for each. The fee covers indexing for up to ten names and one certified copy.

Changing or Revoking the Trust Later

The whole point of a revocable trust is that you can change it. You can revoke the trust entirely, amend specific provisions, or swap beneficiaries at any time during your life while you remain competent, provided the document expressly reserved the right to revoke.

On revocation, the property held by the trustee reverts to you, and the trustee keeps only the powers needed to carry out the revocation itself.¹¹ For amendments, the safest practice is to execute changes with the same formalities used for the original trust: before a notary and two witnesses. Keep every amendment with the original document so the trustee and beneficiaries can reconstruct the full picture later.

What Filling Out This Form Does Not Do

A revocable living trust does not reduce your federal estate tax. Trust assets remain part of your taxable estate, and if your estate exceeds the federal exemption, estate tax applies at the 40 percent rate regardless of whether property sits in a trust.¹² While you’re alive and the trust is revocable, the IRS treats it as a grantor trust: income is reported on your personal return using your Social Security number, and the trust needs no separate EIN. That changes after your death, when the successor trustee applies for an EIN and takes on fiduciary filings. Properly funded trust property passes to beneficiaries under the trust’s terms without going through Louisiana’s succession process, but anything you still own outside the trust at death does go through succession — which is why the funding step matters more than the form itself.

1
Justia. Louisiana Code RS 9-1721 – Title
2
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Code 9-1731 – Trust Defined
3
Justia. Louisiana Code RS 9-1841 – General Rule
4
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1493 – Forced Heirs
5
Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1495 – Amount of Forced Portion
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Justia. Louisiana Code RS 9-1752 – Form of Inter Vivos Trust
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LSU Law. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1833
8
Louisiana Notary Association. What Your Louisiana Notary Can Do for You
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Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes 9-2092 – Recordation of Instruments
10
Justia. Louisiana Code RS 13-844 – Fees of Ex Officio Recorders
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Justia. Louisiana Code RS 9-2046 – Effect of Revocation or Rescission
12
Internal Revenue Service. Estate and Gift Tax FAQs