There are times when a trustee is approached by one of the trust beneficiaries and the trust beneficiary says, “Hey, I really like the cabin in Big Bear. I’d like to buy the cabin in Big Bear. Can you sell it to me?” And the trustee’s response should be, “It depends on how other trust beneficiaries […]
Once in a while, we do see trustees giving away money from a trust to people who aren’t actually named beneficiaries of the trust. To this day, I have no idea why they do it. Misappropriation of Trust Funds by Trustee The situations in which we normally see this is when the trustee is a […]
Ok, so you’re a beneficiary and you just did a title search on the asset that’s in the trust and you find that it’s in the name of the trustee, who is your older brother perhaps. And you say, “Wait a minute. Why is the title to the trust asset in my older brother’s name? Isn’t that […]
Who should you choose to be the trustee of your trust? It’s an important question and most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about. When I used to do estate planning, my clients would say to me, well who should have I be the trustee of my trust? And we would just pick one […]
I want to address professional trustee’s fees. These are different than lay trustee fees. A lay trustee is a brother or sister or somebody else in the family that is named trustee. A professional trustee is generally a large bank, or it’s a large company that holds themselves out as professional trustees. The question is, […]
Beneficiaries often contact our firm and say that they want a trust accounting. An accounting is a great way to get informed about the trust administration. But not every situation calls for a full-blown accounting. A full formal trust accounting, is a very involved process. There’s a lot that goes into a proper accounting. And, typically, you have to […]
We get the question, time to time, how do I as a trustee make a big decision that impacts the trust from a financial standpoint and get protection for making that decision so that the trust beneficiaries don’t later on down the road sue me for that decision? Here’s a brief example. A trustee is […]
There will be times when a trustee will be managing a trust and they’ll come across a trust asset that simply isn’t worth anything. It could be an interest in a partnership that has gone defunct and is no longer in business. It could be a lot of land out in the middle of the desert […]
In most cases, if a trust has bills that it has to pay or debts that have to be paid off, those things will be paid out of the trust estate by the trustee. One of the trustee’s jobs is to pay for all the expenses and debts of the trust estate. Trust Beneficiaries Do […]
In some instances, a trust document will give a beneficiary the power to remove the trustee. The first thing you should do is take a look at your trust document. Look through the trustee provision and see if there is a provision for removing the trustee. A removal provision would say something to the effect that you, as the […]
