Closing Time! How Do You Close a Trust Administration?

[Music] By this Keith Davidson from Albertson and Davidson in this video we're discussing how does a trustee close a trust administration so if you've reached the end of the trust administration and you're ready to make final distribution how does the trustee go about doing that and that depends on who you ask so if you're a trust beneficiary the answer is well the trustee should just give me everything I'm entitled to and walk away and we'll be done and that's fine for the trust beneficiary but it's not so fine for the trustee because what the trustee typically is concerned about is their future liability they don't want to distribute all the money and then be sued later on for some claim that they didn't manage something properly in the trust so typically a trustee after having made preliminary distributions before they make the final distribution will want the beneficiaries to either sign off on everything give a give out an informal accounting and get the beneficiaries to sign a consent in a release or the trustee is going to want to go to court and ask the court to approve their court file the counting and once the court approves that court filed accounting then the beneficiaries can't come back later and sue the trustee for any harms or losses caused by the trust management so it can be a little tricky for a trustee to make sure that everything gets closed properly and beneficiaries have an incentive to work with the trustee to close the trust properly so that they can number one become informed about everything that happened during the trust administration the beneficiary should get an informal accounting at least get backup financial information to make sure the accounting is accurate and then if everything looks in order there's really nothing wrong with signing a release for the trustee and allowing the trustee to make a final distribution and get everything closed up. [Music] [Applause] [Music]