Success with Your Successor Trustee

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There’s a lot that you can do to help make sure the next trustee will be successful – and that the family will experience a smooth transition.

It’s about addressing a few potential issues while there’s still an opportunity to do something about it.   Things like:

• building the foundations for a trusted relationship;
• managing expectations;
• acknowledging the different goals of the various family members;
• clear and accepted decision-making;
• robust communications.

The successor should get started long before the funeral – otherwise good intentions may get buried as well.

The position of successor trustee can be of critical importance to your family.

That’s because providing concise proactive service in advance can make the difference between a seamless transition and the unfortunately common scenario where the surviving family suffers extra pain and expense. This suffering can even escalate up to the high drama of lawsuits and the destruction of family relationships as well as damage to individual productivity and self-esteem.

Specifically, the suffering is caused by not addressing your key family issues before the successor steps in as active trustee. You may not want your family to meet your successor for the first time at the hospital.

By not addressing your family issues in advance, your family – and your successor trustee – may well face some serious problems with dramatic implications, such as:

• PROBLEM: The successor has been deprived of developing a trust relationship with the beneficiary; IMPLICATION: the successor can be handicapped in efforts to advance your program, create unity, and mediate disputes;
• PROBLEM: A failure to manage each beneficiary’s expectations of the trust’s provisions; IMPLICATION: Bad feelings and disputes can surface;
• PROBLEM: No understanding is established on how to deal appropriately with differences between the beneficiaries; IMPLICATION: adversarial relationships can develop and degenerate, out of control;
• PROBLEM: No decision-making mechanism is agreed to by the family around health care or end of life; IMPLICATION: un-channeled high emotions can get in the way of family serenity and in carrying out your wishes;
• PROBLEM: No replacement governance for family businesses is agreed to; IMPLICATION: Disputes can undermine business continuity and profits;
• PROBLEM: A failure to anticipate the post-transition dynamic of a blended family; IMPLICATION: the family can split and fall into dispute.