If you don't make a plan for the day you die, Rutherford County makes one for your family: probate court. A revocable living trust lets a Murfreesboro family decide.
Probate in Rutherford County is filed at the County Clerk on North Maple Street, the same office that renews your license plates, and heard by the General Sessions judges sitting as probate judge. A house makes it a full probate: the county's small-estate shortcut is closed to any estate that owns real estate. That means a probate attorney, court costs, a public file, and at least four months of waiting the law requires. A revocable living trust keeps the house and the accounts out of that office altogether.
It costs nothing. You leave knowing what you need and what it costs, in writing.
Revocable living trusts · Wills · Powers of attorney · Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Vanderpool Law puts the plan in place now, while you're the one deciding, so your Murfreesboro family never files anything on North Maple Street and never waits out the four months. Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation. Let's talk.
In short: In Rutherford County the probate court is the General Sessions bench: by private act, those judges sit as the probate judge, and the papers are filed with the County Clerk at 319 North Maple Street in Murfreesboro. A Murfreesboro house in one name goes through that court, in a public file, before anyone can sell it. A funded revocable living trust passes it to your family with no case. The Register of Deeds is in the same building, and the deed into the trust is recorded there. Vanderpool Law, fifty minutes away in Franklin, draws the plan and records the deed, for one flat fee quoted in writing after thirty minutes that cost nothing.
Murfreesboro at a glance
- County
- Rutherford County; Murfreesboro is the county seat
- Probate
- Rutherford County Probate Court, the General Sessions judges; filings with the County Clerk, 319 N. Maple Street, Suite 121
- Register of Deeds
- Heather Dawbarn, 319 N. Maple Street, Room 133, Murfreesboro
- Transfer tax
- 37 cents per $100; the deed into your own revocable trust is exempt
- Property taxes
- Inside the city, two bills: the county's to the Trustee and the city's
- Population
- 171,178, Census estimate July 1, 2025, up from about 152,000 in 2020
- Deed into your trust
- Exempt from the state transfer tax; recorded by Vanderpool Law.
A living trust for a Murfreesboro family
Rutherford County's probate court is the General Sessions bench: by private act, the General Sessions judges sit as the probate judge, hear every probate matter, and the papers are filed with the County Clerk, whose probate division keeps the public files. The Chancery Court also lists probate among the cases it may hear, so a contested matter can end up there, but the ordinary opening and closing of an estate runs through the County Clerk's counter at 319 North Maple Street. A house titled in one name alone goes through that process; a plan made ahead of time keeps it out.
Murfreesboro added 20,000 people in five years and passed 171,000, and the estates follow the growth. The common one is a first house, in Blackman or off the Greenway along the West Fork, bought by a couple who have not yet decided who gets it. The next most common is the house bought near MTSU to rent, often in one parent's name with a grown child collecting the rent, which is the arrangement most likely to end in front of the probate judge with nobody able to sign a lease or a deed. And the older ones: a house in the East Main Street Historic Zone or a farm toward Christiana that has been in the family since before the county had a Judicial Center. Each is a different trust, and the same probate court if there is no trust at all.
Vanderpool Law is in Franklin, about fifty minutes by I-840 to Seaboard Lane, and the first conversation is thirty minutes, by phone or in person, at no charge. Bring the deed, and if there is a rental, the lease; we read them, complimentary, and tell you what you need and what it costs, in writing, before you decide. The deed into the trust records at the Rutherford County Register of Deeds in the County Clerk's building on North Maple Street, where we record our Rutherford closings. If the price is the thing standing in the way, say so: for a family going through a rough time, in certain situations, there is a trust scholarship.
Questions Murfreesboro families ask about trusts
The questions Google shows for living trust and probate searches in Rutherford County, answered here for Murfreesboro. The full answer is one click away on each.
How long does probate usually take in Tennessee?
In Rutherford County, months at best and more often the better part of a year, because creditors get a window to file claims before the court lets money go out, and the house cannot be sold until the County Clerk's letters say who has authority. A rental near MTSU with tenants in it sits in that limbo too. A funded trust skips the whole timetable; the trustee can act the week after.
Full answer: Do I need a trust, a will, or both? A Tennessee guide →
Can I create my own living trust without a lawyer?
You can sign one, and plenty of Murfreesboro families have, from a kit or a seminar at a hotel on Old Fort Parkway. What the kit does not do is put the house in it: the deed to yourself as trustee, drawn to match the Register's record and recorded on North Maple Street. A trust that holds nothing is a will with extra steps, and the probate judge treats it as one.
Full answer: How much a living trust costs in Tennessee →
Is it better to have a will or a trust in Tennessee?
For a Murfreesboro homeowner, the trust, and for a landlord with a house near campus it is not close: a will puts the rental in probate with tenants in it and nobody able to sign. A pour-over will still comes along behind the trust as the backstop. If little is in your own name, we will say a will is enough.
Full answer: Living trust in Tennessee: do you need one? →
Can I put my house in a trust in Tennessee?
Yes, by a deed from you to yourself as trustee, recorded at the Rutherford County Register on North Maple Street. A rental goes in the same way, and the lease carries over; the tenant pays the trustee. The transfer is exempt from the state transfer tax, your mortgage is unaffected, and inside the East Main Street Historic Zone nothing about the overlay changes.
Full answer: Funding the trust: the step people skip →
Who makes decisions for me if I can't?
Whoever you name in a durable power of attorney and a healthcare power of attorney, both part of the package. In a county growing this fast, many adult children live hours away; the document is what lets one of them deal with the bank, the tenant or the hospital without first filing a conservatorship petition at the County Clerk's counter in Murfreesboro.
Full answer: Durable power of attorney in Tennessee, and why so many get refused →
What are the common mistakes people make when estate planning?
In Murfreesboro, in order: signing a trust and never deeding the house into it; believing a will avoids the probate court; leaving a rental in one parent's name while a child runs it; a beneficiary form from a first marriage still on the retirement account; and never getting around to it at all, which leaves the plan the state wrote, in a county where the probate counter is already busy.
Full answer: No estate plan? Tennessee has one for you →
The full answers, by Jim Vanderpool
Each one with the Tennessee statute it rests on.
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Vanderpool Law · 256 Seaboard Lane G-104, Franklin, TN 37067 · Call the office
This page is general information about living trusts and estate planning for Murfreesboro, Tennessee, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship exists until an engagement letter is signed. Probate in Sumner County and the other Tennessee counties is in the court the county assigns it to; recording is at that county's Register of Deeds. Figures are as of the date shown and change.