Who You Can Trust?
Video Transcribed: Hello, my name is attorney Jason Lile and I am the Oklahoma will and trust lawyer in this area. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about a living revocable trust. Those are the ones we most often recommend for our clients as an estate planning tool.
But a question that you might have is who should I make my trustee? In case you don’t know what a trustee is, simply the person named in the trust who’s responsible and empowered to carry out the business of the trust.
So normally in a living revocable trust, you would be your own trustee. So you are the trustee of your trust which gives you control of everything in your trust all of your stuff during your lifetime. You can have a co-trustee which is often the case with spouses.
But when you, if you were incapacitated or when you die, you have a successor trustee take over and you might be asking yourself who would I trust to do that?
Well, it’s the same consideration as who you might trust to be a personal representative in your will or who you might trust to take care of your house when you’re on vacation. That second one is a little bit understated. But it needs to be somebody that knows you and that you can trust. That would be willing honestly to do a fair amount of work for very little money because even though trustees can be compensated, it’s often very little compared to the amount of work that needs to be done.
And oftentimes a family member is appropriate because a family member is going to remain close to the disposition of your estate no matter what you decide to do.
So when you are picking a trustee you need to take those things into consideration and it often helps to have a backup in mind because you don’t know how long it’s going to be before you need a successor trustee. It might be a year. It might be 10 years. It might be 30 years, but when that person’s time comes they might not want to do it. They might not be able to do it.
So you should do two things and when we draft trust we do this. Put an alternate in there and also give them the power to nominate other trustees if before the time comes you decide you want to trade somebody out for that or they do.
So that’s who you should probably consider putting in your trust. Again, if you have questions about this or any other estate planning matters, my name is Tulsa living trust attorney Jason Lile. You can find me at OklahomaWillandTrust.com or you can give us a call at 918-876-4500 and ask for Jason Lile.