HELPING YOUR SUCCESSOR TRUSTEE TO BE SUCCESSFUL
The creation of a comprehensive living trust-based estate plan is the best step you can take to assist your family and loved ones in addressing the future. When properly used, the legal documents in your plan will allow your designated trustee to act on your behalf when you are no longer able or willing to do so due to incapacity, old age or death.
To make sure your designated successor trustee will be able to quickly act when one of these events occurs, it is very important that he or she knows where to go to locate the documents. You should fully apprise them of the locations of your original documents (which were provided in a white envelope so marked) and the binder copy.
We strongly encourage our clients to keep their original documents in a safe and secure place such as a fire proof home safe or safe deposit box at a bank or credit union. Obviously, it is important that your successor trustee knows how to access these locations. They should know the combination of any safe and have access to the keys to any safe deposit box. It is also important to have their name added at the bank or credit union to the persons who can have access to your safe deposit box.
Once you have established that your trustees will have access to the documents, it is important that they know, at least generally, what documents are in your estate plan. In your binder copy of your estate plan, we included a pamphlet titled the Guided Tour of Your Estate Plan. It goes section by section through the binder to show what documents are in your estate plan and the role that each document plays. At a minimum, we recommend that your successor trustee become familiar with the general nature of those documents as we frequently get requests by such persons to create documents that have already been prepared.
Another important step is for you to periodically review your estate plan to see if the choices you have made still reflect your wishes. Using the same Guided Tour pamphlet noted above, you can quickly review your current plan and determine if any changes need to be made. If changes are in order, call our office. Do NOT edit documents yourself by crossing out provisions or handwriting changes into the margin. These changes are generally not going to be effective and may cause costly court proceedings.
To assist our clients and their successor trustees, we periodically present our Trustee Workshops and we will be doing so again at our Sacramento office on Thursday, August 4th at 2 p.m. and Saturday, August 6th at 10 a.m. To register, click HERE or call our office at (916) 437-3500. Seating is limited and will be filled on a first come, first served basis. We look forward to seeing you and your successor trustee!
