If you have a trust setup, it just means the car is owned by the trust and not you — when you die (or someone enacts the 25th Amendment on you), it automatically goes to the heirs as named in the trust. A better way to do a will that avoids probate for some higher ticket items like houses, cars, investments.
Generally, if you have sums of money and don’t want to torture your heirs with the run-around and B.S. that is probate (it takes 1 - 2 years to get past that in California), if you have a trust, it’s much easier for them. Both my Parents died last year on different continents — so I’m doing that double-duty. So I setup a trust to make it easier for my brother and his family if anything happens to my wife and I. It’s kinda like have an S-Corp own your car.
But like I mentioned — I was getting my Y (which is why I put it in this section, but it’s probably more appropriate post in general or something around financing), and I just got tripped up why I couldn’t get Tesla financing.
I also had a nasty surprise — all of a sudden my payment jumped to over $1,000 a month and is asking for $20K down... I was perplexed but figure it out. I put in a trade-in car — there’s $13,000 on payoff (but it’s worth about $23K)... but before they make you an offer on the car, they add the $13K in liability to the payment instead of the $10K in net asset... in that pending state it really messes with their financing calculator.
They need to figure out how to explain what’s going on with their online forms better.
