Recommended Resources
Stay In The Know
Below are some resources that may be of interest.
1. How to Choose Your Trustee E-Book
This E-Book tells you key considerations in selecting your financial fiduciary — some you may not have thought of. See below…
2. Dualities in Trust Administration
Explore this list with graphical representations of dualities that often appear during trust administration. See below…
3. Trustee Final Exam Questions
Test yourself with these hypothetical scenarios each of which highlights key issues while outlining the dualities inherent in trusts. See below…
How to Choose Your Trustee E-Book
If you are investing in preparing a trust, you likely want it to work well at the time of need. Some understand that excellent results are the product of a well -prepared and well-staffed team, including an excellent trustee. They need no more prompt to invest in the search for the appropriate trustee.
Others may need to be educated that: too often trusts do not produce the results that the grantor wants. Instead, money is misspent, legal fees build, and the beneficiaries are not well supported.
Often that has to do with the complexity of trusts and their administration. Trusts are technical legal documents with sometimes counter-intuitive financial and relational demands. The typical low level of trustee preparation tends to magnify the deep challenge of unaligned stakeholder expectations while working through the detailed technical tasks.
Further complication: many trust stakeholders are not their most reasonable selves at the time of need given the heightened emotions inherent in the combination of family, money, and death. Considering all the above, trust administration can quickly turn from smooth sailing to rough waters — with an impending threat of sinking your goal of a positive impact.
To minimize the threats and to help make sure your goals are accomplished, you may want to use care to select who captains your trust through the high seas of disability and death.
I have written this E-Book on How to Choose Your Trustee to help no matter your trust experience level. Good luck on your journey!
Dualities in Trust Administration
A trustee is often managing seemingly opposing forces. Just like the impulse to inhale is necessarily paired with the counter-compulsion to exhale, these forces in the trustscape come in inseparable, interdependent pairs.
Honoring this energetic structure, these inseparable pairs are fairly called dualities. The management of dualities has been studied extensively by various teachers. The team at Polarity Partnerships LLC has manifested their learning into maps that include such elements as the accompanying values, fears, action steps and early warnings in order to effectively manage the dualities.
What follows is a list of dualities that often appear during trust administration. The capitalized “AND” joins the two forces of the duality. Not every trust will have every duality — far from it. And those dualities actually present in a particular trust may not be conspicuous or needing attention. However, when breakdown or deadlock occurs — or the signs of impending problems appear, recognizing the applicable duality may shed light on the solution.
For several dualities that are key in the trustscape, I’ve applied the mapping approach of Polarity Partnerships to sketch out how the duality may manifest and be managed in hypothetical situations. Hopefully, these scenarios will be a helpful start for whatever the specifics of the situation at hand. Those key dualities are underlined in the list below, and the maps appear immediately below.
1. Foundations:
a. Trust Gift AND Receipt
b. Beneficiary AND Beneficiaries
2. Stewarding Assets:
a. Reap AND Sow
b. Current AND Future Needs
3. Discretionary Distributions:
a. Need AND Equality
b. Need AND Achievement
4. Communications:
a. Responsible Information Management Polarity Map
b. Being Responsive and Available AND Setting Boundaries and Limits
5. Trustee Loyalty:
a. To Himself AND Principal (Grantor or Beneficiary)
b. To Himself AND To the Family
c. To the Family AND To his Ideals
d. To Each Individual Beneficiary AND To the Whole Family
e. To the Trust Creator AND To the Beneficiary
6. General Administration:
a. Plan AND Execute
b. Intention AND Impact
c. Task AND Relationship
d. Excellence AND Learning from Mistakes
e. Delivering Results AND Honoring Process
f. Being Meticulous AND Remaining Mindful Of The Big Picture
g. Being Present AND Being Aware Of The Past And The Future
h. Setting Boundaries and Limits AND Being Responsive and Available
i. Establishing AND Doing AND Protecting AND Communicating AND Building Trust AND Fostering Growth
7. Structure AND Culture:
a. Tradition AND Change
b. Tradition AND Freedom
c. Stability AND Creativity
d. Closed AND Open
e. Appreciation AND Improvement Or Repair
f. Past AND Present
8. Other Core Dualities and Multarities:
a. Doing AND Being
b. Masculine AND Feminine
c. Activity AND Rest
d. Spiritual AND Intellectual AND Psychological AND Physical AND Emotional
e. Generational Oscillation
Trustee Final Exam Questions
There are many facets to excellent trust administration — facets relating to law, finances, and project management. Also critical are human relations and even spiritual issues. The following progressively-building questions, adapted from a trustee training course I created and taught, invoke issues of morality, loyalty and the question of whether and to what extent the trustee is a substitute for the grantor. I hope you find them fun and instructive!
Question #1
In some freak of fantasy, you are the trustee for Ludwig von Beethoven’s trust!
His trust provides that his villa in the Alps is to go to his son, unless the son chooses not to pursue a professional career in music. If his son chooses another profession, the trust directs you to sell the villa and give the proceeds to the Austrian Music Society (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Musik), a non-profit institution, which (like many struggling NFP’s) could sorely use the money to engage in its worthy mission.
Son has decided to abandon a musical career in favor of his passion: to pursue a career in the law and trust administration!
What do you do?
HOW do you do it?
Where is your loyalty?
© 2021-2023 Daniel P. Felix, all rights reserved.
Question #2
In some freak of fantasy, you are the trustee for Ludwig von Beethoven’s trust!
His trust provides that all his right, title and interest in his 9th Symphony is to go to his son, unless the son chooses not to pursue a professional career in music. If his son chooses another profession, the trust directs you to sell the rights and give the proceeds to the Austrian Music Society (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Musik), a non-profit institution, which (like many struggling NFP’s) could sorely use the money to engage in its worthy mission.
Son has decided to abandon a musical career in favor of his passion: to pursue a career in the law and trust administration!
What do you do?
Do we see a difference in the asset — perhaps in the value? Perhaps because significance!
Where is your loyalty? Pretty much at stake! Press and media issues! Issues around confidentiality, etc? Due consideration of your and firm’s reputation.
© 2021-2023 Daniel P. Felix, all rights reserved.
Question #3
In some freak of fantasy, you are the trustee for Ludwig von Beethoven’s trust!
His trust provides that all his right, title and interest in his 9th Symphony is to go to his son, unless the son chooses not to pursue a professional career in music. If his son chooses another profession, the trust directs you to destroy all copies of the 9th Symphony, effectively preventing the work from ever being heard again.
Son has decided to abandon a musical career in favor of his passion: to pursue a career in the law and trust administration!
What do you do?
Where is your loyalty?
© 2021-2023 Daniel P. Felix, all rights reserved.
Question #4
In some freak of fantasy, you are the trustee for Ludwig von Beethoven son’s trust!
As it happens, son inherited the right, title and interest in his father’s 9th Symphony, because he pursued a professional career in music.
Son’s trust provides that all his right, title and interest in the 9th Symphony is to go to his own daughter, unless the daughter chooses not to pursue a professional career in music. If his daughter chooses another profession, the trust directs you to destroy all copies of the 9th Symphony, effectively preventing the work from ever being heard again.
Beethoven’s grand-daughter has decided to abandon a musical career in favor of her true passion: to pursue a career in the law and trust administration!
What do you do?
Where is your loyalty?
© 2021-2023 Daniel P. Felix, all rights reserved.
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