A personal trust can facilitate a variety of goals – making gifts to charity,
reducing estate taxes, and controlling wealth transfers to heirs, for example. The challenge
is finding a suitable trustee, someone who will accept personal responsibility and legal
liability for the welfare of trust beneficiaries. Family members and friends may be
overwhelmed by the responsibilities; a bank trust department may offer impersonal and mediocre service.
Fortunately, we can make either choice of trustee a viable option for you:
Assisting Personal Trustees
For personal trustees who have assumed administration duties, we can help them fulfill those duties through:
- Professional and objective trust investment management
- Preparation and filing of trust tax returns
- Distribution of trust income or principal to the beneficiaries
- Continually communicating with beneficiaries, answering questions they may
have about the trust, and issuing statements of accounts and reports
- Keeping records of all trust transactions
Thus, you can appoint a family or friend to serve as trustee and still
be assured that important trust assets will receive the professional care they require.
Working With Corporate Trustees
Many corporate trustees such as bank trust departments insist on full control of both trust
administration and management of trust investment assets. For this reason alone, many people
opt against professional trust administration.
But it is possible and often more effective to separate trust administration from
trust investment management. Under this arrangement, a corporate trustee delegates
professional investment management to us while retaining responsibility for trust
paperwork, tax preparation, and administrative oversight. The net result is a more
professional and more personal approach to trust management than most corporate trust
departments can provide.
We have strategic partnerships with nationally recognized corporate trustees who
have a long history of facilitating this type of arrangement.
Please give us a call to see how we might help you.
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