Estate Planning - Rules and Trustees

If you are wisely attempting to put some assets into a trust (inter vivos) in your lifetime, then you have been paying attention to the important differences between wills and trusts. A trust created during your life will be far more secure with respect to its ability to withstand challenges to how your assets are to be distributed during estate planning than a will. Making a trust is a brave thing to do, because it telegraphs, to a certain extent, what you are going to do with your assets while you are still alive. This is what insulates it from attacks on your capacity, because it is unlikely, for example that, one of your relations is going to say you are insane or feeble and unduly influenced by another of your relatives to your face and this makes the trust a far surer bet than a will, in some cases.

However, the trust also may engender hard feels regarding the exclusion of a relative and those feelings will become known to a person creating a trust while they are still alive. This is the advantage of a will -- if people don’t like it, you will never know. The will maker is long gone when those that don’t like what they have done contest the will and those that do like it try to defend it. Although, it should be noted that clever drafting should be able to alleviate the necessity of either a contest or a defense. That is why you need a clever estate planning attorney to create your will rather than just a form. The attorney that creates your will often defends its contents, or in other words, their understanding of your wishes. The trust is a different story, because your trust will be administered by someone (called the trustee) for the purpose of those that the trust benefits (the beneficiaries).

One of the paramount problems of forming a trust is deciding what powers the trustee has and what powers they do not have relative to the assets you have placed in trust. Remember that a trustee is already assumed to have a duty to benefit the trust and that many states have laws regarding what a trustee can and cannot do, if the settlor (the creator of the trust) does not specify otherwise. But, again, you don’t want to leave the financial destiny of your trust up to the state any more than you want the state to decide who gets your assets. Your wills and trusts attorney will be able to give you a list of the traditional powers of a trustee in your state and tell you what they mean. Many of the powers concern what type of assets the trustee can invest in on behalf of the trust. For example, the trustee is sometimes prohibited from buying general securities for the trust because they are considered too risky. But, if you have chosen your trusted stock broker as your trustee and she has agreed, then this might be exactly the restriction you don’t want. Consult with your attorney about the kind of trust you would like to create and what the rules are in your state. Remember, that these rules are there to cover the bases in case you don’t make your own rules. Understanding the rules that are there, and why, will give you a sense of the kinds of rules that might be good and the ones that you would rather not have. In addition, you will be able to give the trustee more freedom than the state rules would allow, or less, depending on how conservatively you want your assets to be managed.

Be prepared to have a candid conversation with your attorney regarding what the rules are and what you would like to see happen. It is good to remember that your estate planning attorney has seen many trusts and understands how they work. Sometimes restrictions that seem good today might be the very restrictions that cripple your trust in a vastly different economic environment. In some cases, a trust may span several decades and the trustee may change along with the climate the trust was created in. When radical economic changes have occurred, a trust with greater flexibility will be beneficial. So you have a lot to think about as you enter the exciting world of forming a trust. Don’t let rules be off-putting, they are there as guides and when you understand them you will have a greater understanding of what you need. Ask your estate planner to give you information about the current rules and some general advice about how to choose a trustee.