Clients and other attorneys regularly ask me who can be the trustee of a Special Needs Trust.  The quick answer is that it cannot be the person with a disability (i.e., the beneficiary) or their spouse.  The law effectively prohibits it.  If we were to make the beneficiary or their spouse trustee, the funds held  Read more…

When you establish a trust, one of the biggest decisions you make is who will serve as trustee if you become ill or pass away. You must be able to rely on your successor trustee to follow your instructions, manage trust assets as a reasonably prudent person, make appropriate distributions and avoid even a hint of self-dealing. In my experience, most successor trustees do just fine, especially when they are represented by a competent trust administration attorney. But what if your successor trustee isn’t up to the job? What if they go rogue when you’re not there to do something about it? That’s when using a trust protector can really give you tremendous peace of mind.