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Key takeaways
- Grantor, settlor, and trustor are interchangeable names for the trust creator.
- In a grantor trust for tax purposes, the grantor reports all trust income on their personal return.
- Grantor-trust status is a planning feature, not a flaw — it's used in many advanced estate strategies.
- Transferring assets into a trust requires retitling — missing this step is one of the most common estate errors.
How Olomon thinks about this
Olomon makes funding errors visible: every asset on your balance sheet shows the legal owner, so you can immediately see whether the trust you spent money to create actually owns what it should. That single feature catches one of the most common (and expensive) estate-planning failures.
In-depth definition
Without a grantor, there is no trust. The grantor decides what assets to transfer, who the trustee will be, who the beneficiaries are, and what rules govern distributions. Once the trust is funded — meaning assets are actually retitled into the name of the trust — it becomes a separate legal vehicle for those assets.
Frequently asked questions
Yes — in a typical revocable living trust, the grantor often serves as the initial trustee and names a successor trustee to take over at incapacity or death.
A trust whose income is taxed to the grantor under IRC §§ 671–678. Many revocable trusts are grantor trusts during the grantor's lifetime; certain irrevocable trusts are intentionally drafted as grantor trusts for advanced planning purposes.
Sources
Primary, authoritative references.
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Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Abusive Trust Tax Evasion Schemes — IRSCited for: Trust definitions and roles
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Related terms
More from Estate & Legacy Planning.
Cite this page
APAOlomon Editorial Team. (2026). Grantor. Olomon Financial Glossary. https://olomon.com/financial-glossary/grantor