From: Reed Scott
Trust attorney

In my twenty years of practice as an estate planning and trust attorney I have designed thousands of estate plans for families and assisted in the administration of hundreds of estates. In all that experience one thing has become painfully clear: Most of the costly mistakes in the administration of a family trust are made due to the inexperience of the Trustee in  charge.

One mistake by your trustee can expose your entire estate plan to a public probate process giving everyone with an internet connection access to your most private family information! . 

And even if there isn't a public probate process, I have seen families torn apart when a successor trustee (who is often an adult child, family member, or trusted friend) makes an innocent mistake and the trust's beneficiaries, who are often his or her siblings, nieces and nephews, and other families members, no longer trust them. The ensuing legal battles between family members make the popular television drama Succession look mild in comparison!

Trust Litigation is a Multi-BILLION $$$$ Industry ...

Imagine this scenario: You've named one of your adult children as your successor trustee. They miss an important deadline or don't follow your trust instructions properly. Not because they are bad, but simply because it is all new to them and they didn't fully understand what they were supposed to do. One of your other children (or even a remote beneficiary), decides to seek the advice of their own attorney just for informational purposes. 

Do you think that attorney is going to advise their client to relax and trust your successor trustee? Trust litigation attorneys make money making their clients angry, not by telling them to relax! What was a harmless and innocent mistake by your successor trustee is now a full-blown legal battle that could cost your family thousand of dollars (or much more), and destroy family relationships for generations! 

I have seen the above scenario happen, time and time again! That's why I decided to take my twenty years of trust administration knowledge and distill it into a simple, plain English instruction manual to walk your successor trustee through every step of the critical trust administrative process. 

It's really incredible when you stop to think about it. You spent thousands of dollars having an attorney prepare your estate plan, and there is nothing, in plain English, that tells the person in charge of carrying out that plan what to do. It's like buying a car and finding out they didn't include the steering wheel!

The attorney who created your trust has no incentive to provide your successor trustee with simplified instructions because your attorney wants your successor trustee to be completely dependent on them for what to do.

So your attorney just says: "Have your successor trustee contact me when their is an illness or death and I will assist them in explaining their duties and administering the trust."

The problem is; very often the successor Trustee will have already made costly and irreversible mistakes before they contact the  attorney!

That's why I created this successor Trustee instruction manual. It should be read NOW by your successor trustee,  while you are still able to answer questions. It should be reviewed with you and your successor trustee EVERY YEAR to make sure any changes in your estate are implemented, AND it should be read again immediately upon an illness or death to prepare your successor trustee for the administration of the trust and to prevent any critical missteps before they have had time to consult with an attorney.

It's important your successor trustee  has someplace to turn to get an understanding of the issues involved and to prevent costly mistakes!

I wrote this manual not as a substitute for an attorney for your successor trustee, but as a companion guide to be there for them when you can't. 

Would you want to be appointed as trustee of a trust without clear instructions on how it works? 

So here's the deal

You spent your lifetime accumulating real estate, retirement accounts, investments, insurance, and personal items of value. 

Then you spent thousand of dollars with an attorney setting up a trust so that everything could be private and your lifetime of hard work wouldn't be eaten up by taxes, court costs, and attorney's fees. The trust was supposed to prevent problems. 

There's one big problem left however. Your successor trustee, the person designed to carry out your plan has never done this before, and they are overwhelmed!

So, how do we solve that problem?

Glad you asked 

The very first thing your successor trustee will see when they open the successor trustee manual is a personalized letter from you instructing them on how your trust and estate is uniquely structured. You will tell them what you expect them to do and explain the purpose of the trustee manual. If you are married and you take care of the finances in your household, the successor trustee could be your spouse. Will they know what to do if something happens to you? If it's an adult child will they know. Here is your chance to tell them in one simple location that can be used to point to other important documents or important sections of the trust.

How can I create a personalized letter for you when I don't know you or how your estate is structured?

Simple, I know how trusts work (They work the same in all 50 states), and I give your a letter template that I have used for years in my own practice to help clients give instructions to their successor trustees. You can add as much or as little as you like to make it uniquely your own and give your successor trustee information about assets, special instructions or whatever you believe will help them in carrying out your plan. Having this summary as the first thing they see not only reduces mistakes it saves them hours digging through the trust trying to figure out the legalese.

Some people use the letter as just a high level overview of their trust, and some have used it as an opportunity to state their family philosophy and their wishes for how they would like to see their family benefit. Some clients would take the letter and use it as a script to record their own personal video letter to their successor Trustee. How you use the trustee instructions template is only limited by your imagination, but it comforting for your successor trustee to have your instructions summarized for them in one easy and convenient location. The great thing about these personalized instructions is that you don't need an attorney to modify them for you whenever you have a new thought you wan to make sure your successor trustee will know about. You simply update the supplied word template as often as you need. 

That is step one.

One of  the ways I reduced stress for successor trustees when I was assisting them  was to draw a high level diagram or roadmap of how the trust worked. For example, what happened upon incapacity? What happened at death of one parent? What happened at the death of both parents? Where they're any specific distributions? To whom? How?

There is no way I can know how your trust works, but I do know that all trusts have a limited number of paths they can take. I have put my years of experience into designing templates to accommodate every option. All you do is answer a series of questions to determine which template to use. 

Once you have the right template for your trust, you simply answer the questions that are unique for that template and you will have a completed high level roadmap that tells your successor trustee exactly how your trust works and what expect. You will have your own personalized infographic of your trust and estate plan that reduces stress as it reduces the unknowns.

I have seen family members in expensive and contentious litigation because of a wrongly interpreted provision in a trust, or even worse a completely missed or misunderstood clause. Your personalized infographic will reduce stress, costly mistakes, and maintain family harmony. 

A 21 Chapter Step-by-Step guide to assist your successor trustee every step of the way. All the steps and instructions are valid in all 50 states! I still advise your successor trustee to work with a local attorney but this trustee instruction manual could cut the hours and frustration by thousands of dollars!

Checklists of actions that must be take and when. Guidelines for how to communicate to beneficiaries to protect themselves. 

An explanation of their duties as a trustee and how to carry them out. And all written in Plain English, not legalese or technical jargon that will have them pulling out their hair! 

This successor trustee manual is like having their very own trust lawyer standing over their shoulder throughout the entire process! Imagine the feeling of comfort your successor trustee will have with this user friendly manual at their fingertips 7 days a week, twenty-four hours a day. No paying an expensive attorney just to answer simple questions. This could easily save your successor trustee five hours of attorney time just trying to figure out what to do when. At $500/ hour for even ten hours that's $5000! Not to mention the savings in stress and frustrations that go with being a first time trustee. Even someone who's done this before will find this guide to a lifesaver. I gave this guide to new attorneys and paralegals as part of their training. Years of hard work and hundreds of revisions have gone into making this simple, and straight forward instruction manual easy to use for the non-attorney trustee.