The Trustee’s Companion
Someone who trusted you very much gave you the job of administering a living trust. That’s no small thing. It’s your job to carry out that person’s last wishes, pay their remaining debts and taxes, and distribute their property to their favored relatives and friends.
In the old days, only wealthy families created trusts. Those were the folks with the family attorney who knew everyone’s names and could be counted on to give advice at every turn. These days, all sorts of people create trusts, many of whom don’t have the luxury of a family lawyer and who don’t know the first thing about what will happen when the trust actually has to be wrapped up someday. As a result, every single day people just like you find themselves stuck with a job that they don’t know much about, aren’t sure that they can handle, and yet, for many reasons, feel honor bound to take on. That’s why we wrote this book.
We don’t blame you if right now you are wondering how on earth to get this done properly, efficiently, and with a minimum of drama. Consider this book your trusty companion (pun absolutely intended). It’s full of practical advice that will help you handle it smoothly, whether you are administering a trust that’s going to get settled quickly or one that lasts for years. We’ll show you how to:
Decide whether or not to take on the job of trustee
Understand your legal duties
Develop good relationships with the trust beneficiaries
Get organized
Identify and collect trust assets
Deal with life insurance, retirement assets, and other nontrust assets
Find and work effectively with expert advisers
Set up ongoing trusts for the benefit of the surviving spouse, children, or someone with a disability
Invest trust assets properly
Handle income tax returns for the deceased person and for the trust (and get help with estate tax returns)
Prepare proper trust accounting reports
End the trust and distribute assets to the beneficiaries.
As estate planning attorneys with more than 20 years of collective experience, we’ve counseled trustees on all aspects of trust administration, from beginning to end. We’ve seen what works well, what can go wrong, and how to avoid some of the most dangerous mistakes. We’ve taken our best advice, our most illustrative war stories, and our best practices and put them here for you.
You can read this book from beginning to end, or just skip to the specific chapters that you need help with. You can use this book as a do-it-yourself guide so you can do much of the work without hiring help. You can also use it as a way to work effectively with attorneys, accountants, and financial advisers. However you choose to use it, we hope it will help you along the way.
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