Transferring into a trust

I'm interested in this issue also!

I do own my DVC contracts, house, etc in a revocable trust. We had our trust set up prior to buying into DVC, so I didn't go through the transfer process. I just saw on FB today where an adult son was asking for help on how to deal with his deceased parent's contract. The contract wasn't in a trust or in his name, so DVC didn't let him pay the annual dues which are now a couple months overdue. You can imagine how stressful that would be. It again reminded me how helpful a trust is for passing on the contracts. You are doing your future heirs a real favor by dealing with this now.

we put ours into a trust. don't remember any questions coming up during the process about outstanding vacations or anything like that.

I thought of a tip that I want to pass along that might help future DVC purchasers. If you already have a trust set up and are going to buy a Direct contract with DVC. They require you to fill out and have notarized a "Certificate of Trust". I hear of people that are planning to buy a contract while they are in person, so know that you may want to ask DVC to send you that Certificate of Trust paperwork so you have have it filled in and notarized in advance. It did slow up our purchase by a couple days as we had to go to the credit union to see their notary.

This is good advice. We recently had to do this for our trust when we bought our recent direct contract. Disney has a virtual notary process you can use but it took a day to get it scheduled. Wish I had known beforehand as I could have had it notarized and completed at my work.

oh that is interesting. They said they needed the notarized Certificate of Trust prior to drawing up the contract, so we handled that and then the contract was written. Our guide was unfamiliar with the process involving a trust, so perhaps he could have made things a little easier and offered their online notary for the Certificate. We did do their online notary for the contract signing.

Did they do the notary of the Certificate of Trust at the same time as the notary for the sale of the contract for you or did you have two notary appointments?

Different appts with 2 different notaries. I was suprised when they added the notary at closing. Wasn’t sure why they wouldn’t do it all at once. I think the whole process took about 5 days total.

okay, that totally makes sense then. My guide could have been better about offering that service, but getting our Certificate of Trust notarized at the Credit Union was free and not a hassle at all. But the notary did want to ask a BUNCH of questions about DVC 😂

We started our resale journey June 2025 (Aulani, 200 points) and just closed today May 5, 2026 because the owner had a reservation planned possibly around April 2026, but had an expected closing date of May 2026 disclosed on the resale agreement. We were very patient but got a great deal and the year gave us time to save the funds to almost pay off our contract.

When I reached out to Derek at DVC Resale in June 2025 we were worried the seller would back out because it’s a year away from closing but he reassured us these contracts are normal with clients booking future reservations. So we went ahead and put in our offer. We live in California and Derek suggested we finalized our trust first since we had to send in a copy of our trust certificate before we were able to start our contract with the seller if we wanted to put our contract in our trust. They couldn’t put the name of our trust on any resale agreement without a finaized copy of our trust certificate. Once DVC Resale got our trust certificate everything else moved very fast. We recived all the papers, sent in our down payment, got financing approved with Amy at Monera the same weekend. We returned our notorized agreement by Fed Ex and waited 11 months, very patiently. Just checked the DVC Resale app today seeing the CONGRATULATIONS our contract closed today notification!! Now waiting for Disney to send us our membeship info, estimated 6-8 weeks.