How’s Your Florida Trustee Investing?: trustee sentiment and whether your Florida trustee is a bear or a bull, or……

Are you pleased with the way your Florida trustee is investing?   Are you the beneficiary of a Florida trust and wonder how your Florida trustee is doing as the stock market hits new highs?  Is your trustee encouraged by the surging stock market…….or negative and scared?  In Florida, Florida trust lawyers who represent trustees know that trust investing is not necessarily easy.  While the Florida Trust Code is a set of statutes which tells trust beneficiaries, trustees and Florida trust lawyers how trusts are administered and interpreted, Chapter 518 of the Florida statutes contains the Florida prudent investor rule.   Prudent investing is the backbone of investing for Florida trustees. It seems like everday, trusts are created by Florida residents from Jupiter, Florida to Aventura, Florida.  Courts in Palm Beach County, Broward County and Dade County, Florida have their fill of trustee and beneficiary lawsuits.  Without exagerating, Florida trusts hold millions and millions and probably billions of dollars.   Trust beneficiaries from Plantation to Boynton Beach, throughout Florida, and indeed throughout the US, should expect their trustee to be prudent with the trust property and trust money and trust investments.  So, with the stock market well off of November 2012 lows, and having surged over 20% in just 2013 (and we are not done with the year yet), consider:  does the surging stock market and new stock market highs make your trustee nervous or happy?   Investor sentiment is an interesting thing to consider.  There are those trustees who are nervous:  with every new market high, they are cautious, apprehensive, even scared to invest trust money in the stock market.  Other trustees see a positive note on a surging stock market and want to invest and not lose the opportunity to make money for beneficiaries and the Florida trust. While Florida’s prudent investor rule suggests a trust investment strategy or plan should be impersonal, prudent and emotion-less, we all know that trustees are persons, with emotions, inclinations, feelings, apprehensions, attitudes and varying character traits.   What’s your trustee like?  Scared or confident?   How does your trustee invest:  all at once or does he or she “tippy toe” into the market.   Does it matter?  (You bet it does.)  Need a hand with a Florida trust?:  michelle@pankauskilawfirm.com  Advocate hard. Litigate smart.