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Rhode Island Revocable Living Trust
Support GuideRhode Island22 min read

Rhode Island Revocable Living Trust

How a Rhode Island revocable living trust works without a Uniform Trust Code: validity under § 18-4-27, funding the deed, and the pour-over will.

By Settled Editorial

A Rhode Island revocable living trust is a written document you sign while you are alive that holds property you retitle into it, with you still in charge. You name yourself trustee, keep every power you had before, and name a successor trustee to take over at your death or during incapacity. Trust property passes without a probate file.

One fact shapes every other answer on this page. Rhode Island never enacted the Uniform Trust Code. Read Title 18, Fiduciaries chapter by chapter and no trust code appears, and Title 33 carries probate practice with no trust code either. Trust content written around uniform section numbers cites law this state does not have, so your document has to carry rules a code would otherwise supply.

No Trust Code, So the Document Does the Work

Here is what Title 18 actually gives a Rhode Island living trust, chapter by chapter.

ChapterWhat it supplies
18-1 Application of Laws to TrustsWhen Rhode Island law governs the trust. Section 18-1-3 honors a governing-law clause written by a Rhode Island resident; § 18-1-1 reaches a nonresident whose trust says so, is administered here and holds the major part of its value here.
18-2 Appointment of FiduciariesThe route to a court-appointed trustee when the seat empties and the document supplies no answer.
18-4 Powers of FiduciariesSection 18-4-2 gives every trustee default power to invest, sell, lease, exchange and reinvest where the document says nothing to the contrary. Section 18-4-27 is the validity section.
18-6 AccountingSection 18-6-1 covers reasonable expenses and reasonable compensation for a trustee.
18-9.1 Spendthrift TrustsOne section, on establishing spendthrift protection for a beneficiary who is not the settlor.
18-14 Uniform Testamentary Additions to Trusts ActSection 18-14-2, the section that makes a pour-over will work.
18-15 Rhode Island Uniform Prudent Investor ActThe investment standard of care, diversification, loyalty and cost rules for a trustee who invests.

Two practical consequences follow. Your Rhode Island document has to spell out the successor chain, the trustee's authority to sell and mortgage, the reporting you want and the method for changing your mind, because no code section quietly fills those gaps. And a Rhode Island trust dispute has no state trust-code notice period behind it, so early written communication with the people you named does more work here than a statute would.

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Section 18-4-27 Is the Section Your Trust Rests On

The General Assembly added § 18-4-27 in 1995 to shut down every attack a family member might bring against a self-settled revocable trust. A written trust that is otherwise valid, including one whose principal is real property in whole or in part, stays valid for all six of these reasons:

  1. You, another person, or both hold the power to revoke, amend, alter or modify the trust in whole or in part.
  2. You, another person, or both hold the power to appoint by deed or will who receives income or principal.
  3. You, another person, or both may add property to the trust or withdraw principal or income at one time or at different times.
  4. You, another person, or both may remove the trustee and appoint a successor.
  5. You kept the right to receive all or part of the trust income during your life or any part of your life.
  6. You are the sole trustee and the sole current beneficiary during your lifetime.

Point six answers the question that stops most first-time Rhode Island trust owners. Naming yourself as the only trustee and the only current beneficiary breaks nothing. Subsection (c) then draws the merger line precisely: the doctrine invalidates an otherwise valid trust only where legal title and the entire beneficial interest, counting future and contingent interests, become irrevocably united in one person who is not under an incapacity. Name remainder beneficiaries and a successor trustee and you never approach that line.

Subsection (e) leaves your existing payable-on-death arrangements alone. Bank accounts, share accounts, deposits, certificates of deposit and savings certificates held in trust for another person keep working as before, whether you set them up before or after the trust.

Write the Power to Revoke Into the Document

Trust-code states tell you a trust is revocable unless it says otherwise. Rhode Island supplies no such default. Section 18-4-27(a)(1) recognizes a reserved power to revoke and confirms the trust survives it, and nothing in Title 18 hands you that power if your document stays silent.

So write it down, and write down the mechanics with it:

  • The words reserving your power to revoke and amend, and the method for using it, in writing, signed and dated
  • Who serves as successor trustee, in order, and how a replacement gets appointed
  • What happens if you become unable to serve, and who decides that
  • The trustee's authority to sell, convey, mortgage, lease and grant easements
  • Whether the trustee may act without the consent of the beneficiaries

That last group is not housekeeping. Rhode Island's real estate statute asks for those exact statements in recordable form later, and drafting them once at the start saves an amendment at closing.

Funding Is Where Rhode Island Trusts Break

An unfunded trust is a safe you never filled. The document controls what you actually move into it, and anything sitting in your own name at death runs through the probate court of the city or town where you lived.

The Deed

Section 34-11-1 sets the bar for a conveyance in trust. Every conveyance of land on trust, and every declaration of trust concerning the conveyance, is void unless made in writing, duly signed, acknowledged, delivered, and recorded in the land evidence records of the town or city where the land sits. A delivered but unrecorded deed still binds the parties, their heirs and anyone with notice, which is thin protection against a future title examiner.

Section 34-4-27 then adds the step Rhode Island writes into its own recording practice. Property to be held in trust is conveyed to the trustees of the trust. Before any transfer or mortgage of trust property, the clerk needs either the trust instrument as amended or restated, or an affidavit or memorandum of trust. That affidavit is signed by each settlor or by each current trustee, and it carries nine statements:

  1. The name of the trust, each settlor, each original trustee, and the date of the original instrument and of each amendment or restatement
  2. The names of the current trustees
  3. Whether the trustees may perform discretionary acts without the consent, concurrence or direction of the beneficiaries
  4. The trustees' authority to convey, mortgage, lease or grant restrictions or easements, with the relevant trust provisions attached
  5. Whether anything in the trust cuts down that power
  6. Whether the trust has been revoked or terminated, and if so the trustees' power to convey to effect it
  7. How trustees are replaced and successors appointed
  8. How and when the trust terminates, whether it is revocable, and what makes it irrevocable
  9. The date and place of death of the settlor, where that applies

Recording the affidavit keeps the terms of your trust off the public record while giving a buyer's lawyer everything needed. Subsection (b) lets any third party without actual knowledge to the contrary rely on those statements. Subsection (c) carries the trap: an amendment or revocation of the trust, or of the affidavit, must be recorded to constitute notice to third parties. Change your trustee or restate the trust and the land records need to hear about it.

Two more Rhode Island sections save deeds that were drafted loosely:

  • Section 34-4-28 says title from a conveyance to a named trust, where the trustees are not named as grantees, is not defective on that account, and vests title in the trustees of the named trust.
  • Section 34-11-37 cuts the other way. A deed to "Jane A. Roe, as trustee" that never sets out the trust terms and never points at a recorded instrument lets the grantee sell as freely as if the word trustee had been left off, and a buyer takes free of any undisclosed beneficiary's claim. Name the trust and its date, or record the memorandum.

What the Deed Costs

Section 34-13-7 sets $80.00 for a warranty deed, a quitclaim deed, or a deed of a trustee, executor or administrator. Anything not expressly provided for, which is where an affidavit or memorandum of trust lands, costs $45.00. Each additional page or fraction costs $1.00. Section 42-8.1-20(b) imposes another $4.00 on every instrument filed for recording under § 34-13-7, split $3.00 to the state archives and $1.00 to a local historical records trust. That $4.00 is why clerks post $84.00 for a one-page deed and $49.00 for a memorandum, and no town is charging you extra.

Conveyance tax is a smaller question than it looks. Section 44-25-1(a) taxes a deed at $3.75 per $500 only where the consideration paid exceeds $100.00. Moving your own house into your own trust involves no purchase price, and subsection (c) tells you what to do about it: where no consideration is actually paid, the instrument shall carry a statement to the effect that the consideration is such that no documentary stamps are required. Leave that line off and the clerk sends the deed back.

The Co-Ownership Trap

Section 34-3-1 presumes a tenancy in common in every gift, grant, conveyance, devise or legacy of real or personal estate made to two or more people, "whether they be husband and wife or otherwise", unless the instrument declares a joint tenancy, names the survivors, conveys to them as trustees or executors, or otherwise makes joint intent manifest. Married Rhode Island couples routinely assume their deed carries survivorship when it does not. Pull your deed and read the grantee line before you decide whether a trust, new survivorship words, or both are the answer.

Accounts and the Rest of the Plan

Retitle bank and brokerage accounts into the name of the trust, using the trust's name and date exactly as the document reads. Leave retirement accounts alone and name people on the beneficiary form instead, since retitling a retirement account is a taxable event you do not want. Life insurance and annuities also pass by beneficiary designation, and naming the trust there is a decision to make with an advisor rather than a default.

Then read the other ways to avoid probate in Rhode Island, because a trust is one method among several and the cheapest answer for a given asset is often a beneficiary form.

The Pour-Over Will

Every trust plan still needs a will. Section 18-14-2, part of the Uniform Testamentary Additions to Trusts Act, is what makes the pour-over clause hold up here:

  • Subsection (a) lets a will devise or bequeath property to the trustee of a trust already established, or one to be established, so long as the trust is identified in the will and its terms sit in a written instrument other than a will
  • Subsection (b) says the gift is not invalid because the trust is amendable or revocable, or because the trust was amended after the will was signed or after you died
  • Subsection (c) says the poured-over property does not become a testamentary trust under court supervision. It joins the trust it was given to and is administered under the trust's terms, including amendments made before or after your death
  • Subsection (d) is the one to watch: unless your will says otherwise, revoking or terminating the trust before you die makes the gift lapse

Point four is the reason to restate a trust rather than revoke and start over. Revoke the old trust, sign a new one, and forget to redo the will, and the pour-over gift has nowhere to land.

The will itself has to clear § 33-5-5: in writing, signed by you or by someone else in your presence at your express direction, with that signature made or acknowledged in front of two or more witnesses present at the same time, who then attest and subscribe in your presence. Rhode Island asks for no particular form of attestation. Our guide on Rhode Island will requirements walks the execution step by step, and the will is also where you nominate a guardian for minor children, which no trust can do.

What a Rhode Island Trust Does Not Do

It does not shrink the estate tax. The Division of Taxation publishes a gross-estate threshold of $1,838,056 for a death on or after January 1, 2026. Section 44-22-1.1(c)(2) gives "federal gross estate" the meaning it carries in federal law, and subsection (d) takes all values as finally determined for federal estate tax purposes, so property you kept the power to revoke sits inside the measurement. Section 44-23-1 then wants a sworn statement of the estate within nine months of death, with a $50.00 fee for a death before January 1, 2025 and no fee on or after that date. Read the Rhode Island estate tax rules before assuming a trust changed the answer.

It does not change your income tax. Under 26 U.S.C. § 676, the grantor is treated as the owner of any portion of a trust where the power to revest title in the grantor is exercisable by the grantor or a non-adverse party. Your revocable trust reports on your own return while you are alive.

It does not shelter assets from Medicaid. 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(d)(3)(A) counts the corpus of a revocable trust as a resource available to you, treats payments to you or for your benefit as income, and treats other payments as assets you disposed of. Long-term care planning belongs with a licensed Rhode Island elder law attorney.

It does not erase the probate filing fee by itself. Section 33-22-21 charges 1.0 percent of the personal property of the decedent over which the court has jurisdiction, never below $30.00 and never above $1,500, with the § 42-8.1-20 assessment on top, which is the $34.00 and $1,504 that city and town charge sheets show. Funding the trust shrinks the base, since § 33-9-1 puts only personal property on the inventory and trust property is not the decedent's. Leave one account behind and the estate still opens at the minimum.

Trust, Life Estate Deed, or Survivorship Words

Rhode Island has no transfer-on-death deed. Title 34 runs from chapter 34-1 through chapter 34-50 without a beneficiary-deed chapter, so any "Rhode Island transfer-on-death deed" form you find online is selling an instrument the state never created. That absence is why the trust carries more weight here than in a beneficiary-deed state.

The three real options for a Rhode Island house are:

  • A revocable living trust. Flexible, private, and it also covers incapacity. Costs the most to set up and demands the funding work above.
  • A life estate deed with enhanced powers. Section 34-4-2.1 lets a grantor convey title, reserve a life estate, and keep the reserved power to sell, convey, mortgage or otherwise dispose of the property during life without the consent or joinder of the remainder holders. A conveyance by the life tenant exercising that power vests good title on recording, free of the remainder interest. One deed, one recording fee, no funding project, and far less flexibility than a trust.
  • Survivorship title. Works only where the deed declares a joint tenancy or names the survivors, because of the § 34-3-1 presumption above. It also gives a co-owner present rights in your house today.

When the house eventually sells out of the trust, selling inherited Rhode Island property covers the tax and lien-discharge steps your successor trustee will meet.

Incapacity Is Half the Reason to Sign One

A funded trust handles your incapacity without a court. Your successor trustee takes over on whatever trigger your document names, manages what the trust holds, and pays your bills from it. No petition, no hearing, no guardian.

That protection reaches only what the trust actually holds. Everything else needs a durable power of attorney, and Rhode Island is strict about the words. Section 34-22-6.1 keeps an agent's authority alive through your later incompetency only where the writing contains "This power of attorney shall not be affected by the incompetency of the donor", or "This power of attorney shall become effective upon the incompetency of the donor", or similar words showing that intent. Sign the trust and a Rhode Island power of attorney at the same appointment, and check that the power of attorney authorizes your agent to fund the trust if you cannot.

When the day comes that the successor takes over for good, what the successor trustee does walks the job under the Title 18 fiduciary chapters.

When a Trust Is More Than You Need

A small Rhode Island estate has a cheaper exit. Section 33-24-1 lets a surviving spouse, child, grandchild, parent, sibling, niece, nephew, aunt, uncle or other interested party of full age who lives in Rhode Island file a sworn statement for voluntary informal administration where the decedent left personal property only, valued on the § 33-9-1 inventory basis and exclusive of tangible personal property, of no more than $15,000. The filer waits 30 days after the death, files in the probate court of the city or town where the decedent lived, pays $30.00, and pays $5.00 more for the certification of appointment.

Read that measurement twice. Tangible personal property, including the car and the furniture, drops out of the $15,000 count. Any real property at all takes the estate out of the route. If the house is the only reason you are considering a trust, compare the trust against a § 34-4-2.1 life estate deed before you decide, and read how Rhode Island probate works so you are comparing against the real process rather than a reputation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Rhode Island have a Uniform Trust Code?

No. Read Title 18, Fiduciaries, chapter by chapter at the General Assembly's own server and you find application of laws to trusts, appointment of fiduciaries, powers of fiduciaries, common trust funds, accounting, spendthrift trusts, qualified dispositions, the Rhode Island Uniform Custodial Trust Act, the Uniform Testamentary Additions to Trusts Act and the Rhode Island Uniform Prudent Investor Act. No trust code sits in Title 18, and none sits in Title 33 with probate practice. National content built around uniform section numbers cites law this state never enacted.

Do I have to register a living trust in Rhode Island?

No probate court opens a file on your trust while you are alive, and nothing in Title 18 sets up a registration step. Real estate is the exception worth knowing. R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-4-27(a) says any transfer or mortgage of trust property requires recording either the trust instrument as amended or an affidavit or memorandum of trust, and subsection (c) says an amendment or revocation must be recorded to constitute notice to third parties.

Can I be the sole trustee and sole beneficiary of my Rhode Island trust?

Yes. R.I. Gen. Laws § 18-4-27(a)(6) says a written trust is not invalid because the settlor is the sole trustee and the sole current beneficiary during his or her lifetime. Subsection (c) then limits merger: the doctrine invalidates a trust only where legal title and the entire beneficial interest, including future and contingent interests, become irrevocably united in one person who is not under an incapacity.

What does it cost to record a Rhode Island trust deed?

R.I. Gen. Laws § 34-13-7 sets $80.00 for a warranty deed, a quitclaim deed or a trustee's deed, $45.00 for any other instrument not expressly provided for, and $1.00 for each additional page. R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-8.1-20(b) adds a $4.00 assessment on every instrument filed for recording under § 34-13-7, which is why city and town clerks post $84.00 for a one-page deed and $49.00 for a memorandum of trust.

Does funding a trust lower the Rhode Island probate filing fee?

It lowers the base the fee is measured on. R.I. Gen. Laws § 33-22-21 charges 1.0 percent of the personal property of the decedent over which the court has jurisdiction, never less than $30.00 and never more than $1,500, and § 42-8.1-20(b) adds $4.00, which is why towns publish $34.00 and $1,504. Property the trust already holds is not the decedent's personal property. Open a probate for anything left in your own name and the minimum still applies.

Does a Rhode Island living trust avoid the state estate tax?

No. The Division of Taxation measures the threshold on the gross estate, and publishes $1,838,056 for a death on or after January 1, 2026. R.I. Gen. Laws § 44-22-1.1(c)(2) gives federal gross estate the meaning it carries in federal law and subsection (d) takes values as finally determined for federal estate tax purposes, so property you kept the power to revoke stays inside the number. Section 44-23-1 wants a sworn statement within nine months of death, with no fee for a death on or after January 1, 2025.

Does a revocable trust protect my house from Medicaid?

No. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(d)(3)(A), the corpus of a revocable trust counts as a resource available to you, payments to you or for your benefit count as your income, and other payments count as assets you disposed of. The house stays countable at the application. Take long-term care questions to a licensed Rhode Island elder law attorney before moving any asset.

This page is general information about Rhode Island trusts and estates. Every family and every deed is different, so review your own documents with a licensed Rhode Island attorney, and confirm recording and filing questions with the city or town clerk and the probate court where you live.

Sources:

It is not legal advice.

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Settled Estate is not a law firm and does not give legal advice.

Information current as of August 2, 2026

Settled Estate is not a law firm, and this content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Probate laws and procedures in Rhode Island can change. Consult with a qualified attorney for advice specific to your situation. Full disclaimer.

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