Issue link: https://info.seic.com/i/1457322
Fiduciaries must carry out most elements of an effective estate plan and certain lifetime planning strategies. This results in personal trust and estate accounts. When creating your plans, you and your attorney will decide who will be the trustee and how much power the trustee will have. Some key factors involved in making the choice of a trustee are outlined in this article. Great care is important in selecting your trustees, as these decisions may affect your family and the effectiveness of your planning for many generations to come. The person or institution you name as trustee must be able to handle many administrative and investment-related requirements such as: › Safekeeping of assets › Prudent investing › Distributing income and/or principal to beneficiaries, as directed in the governing document › Making tax decisions and elections concerning the trust and filing its tax returns › Keeping records of all transactions › Issuing regular statements of account activity and tax reports to beneficiaries › Communicating with beneficiaries › Paying expenses Your trustee must make many discretionary and complex decisions about matters, such as appropriate distributions to your beneficiaries, investment management and tax elections. Accordingly, it is important for the trustee to have a good measure of common sense. By state law— and, in the case of corporate trustees, by regulation—your trustee must act prudently and reasonably at all times and is fully accountable to your beneficiaries for these actions. On the Inside: Individual or Corporate Trustee? ........................................ 2 Trustee Comparison Chart .................................................. 3 Tax Issues ................................................................................ 5 Conclusion .............................................................................. 5 Why Consider Changing Your Existing Trustee? ............. 6 Selecting a trustee. Points to consider