What do I do about stocks when I have the actual stock certificate?

There's two ways to own stocks.

One is you actually hold the certificate, and the other is that the certificates are actually held you for by a brokerage house.

It's much easier to change title if your certificates are held in a brokerage account. It's much easier to sell, to buy, and to keep track of your stock if it's held in a brokerage account.

Oftentimes we advise clients to take their certificates and deposit them into a brokerage account opened in the name of the trust for a future ease of management. If you do want to keep the certificate for some reason, you will have to get it reissued by going through the company's transfer agent.

We have found this to take many months and be a very complicated process. If you are the owner of an S corp. or you have a small corporation that operates your business, when you first set up the corporation, you should have had a stock certificate issued to you showing your ownership.

We find often, people do not have such a stock certificate, it's something that wasn't done, or they can't find it, we do give you guidelines in the program that show you how to issue a stock certificate for your own personal S corporation.

Be sure to do that for ease of management in case of incapacity or your death.