PALM BEACH TRUSTEES: feel like you are being watched ?

If you are the trustee of a Palm Beach trust, you might feel that you are being watched or even monitored by your beneficiaries.

Here’s some insight to help you feel better, serve your beneficiaries and to protect yourself from trust litigation.

1. First : remember that you are a trustee and that means you are a fiduciary ! You owe your beneficiaries a duty to help them, work for them and to protect them.
2. Second, no one is forcing you to serve as a Palm Beach trustee. So, if you don’t like it, resign.
3. If you don’t like your beneficiaries, you should think about stepping down. You have to serve your beneficiaries, and place your trust beneficiaries’ interests above everyone else’s-including your own ! That’s what it means to be a Palm Beach trustee.
4. Feel like you are being watched?  Everyday ?  Here and there?  If you feel like you are being monitored, well….. you are.
5. You are required to give “relevant” information and annual accountings to all your trust beneficiaries….including so called “remainder beneficiaries.”
6. Most trustees send monthly statements showing where all the financial assets are, and what they are worth. Oh yes…. Trustees also disclose how much money is going out of the trust and to whom…….trustee fees, attorney fees for the trustee, distributions of $$ to beneficiaries, etc.
7. Beneficiaries can object to your investment decisions, your fees, your actions and in-actions.  It’s their right to.
8. So, yes, Palm Beach trustees: you are being monitored or watched. Beneficiaries have that right.
9. So, if this makes you nervous, then maybe being a trustee is not for you.  You could consult with a good Palm Beach trust attorney. Consider one who actually tries cases and conducts trust lawsuits: not just a trust lawyer who writes Florida trusts. Luckily, there are many good trust lawyers from Palm Beach Gardens, to West Palm Beach, to Boca Raton. The trust typically pays the trustee’s legal fees for services to the trust.
10. There are a number of protective mechanisms and devices for Florida trustees buried deep in the Florida Trust Code….. use ’em !