No. of Recommendations: 0
One of the biggest pitfalls for passing on wealth is choosing one child to control a family trust when siblings or other relatives would also benefit, according to the analysis of 640 trust disputes, published in the Washington University Law Review earlier this month.
Christopher Ryan, one of the study’s authors and a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, described this specific trust setup as “an important recipe for conflict.”
“That arrangement could combine ordinary sibling rivalry with a genuine power imbalance,” he told CNBC via email. For instance, he added, giving one child privileges such as discretion over trust distributions can deepen preexisting feelings among siblings that a parent played favorites.
Yes. We've gone back and forth on this. We embraced the idea of very low investment management fees and taught our kids to do the same. It seems wrong to then to employ a trust manager to do what the kids could easily do themselves. It seemed sensible to have our eldest be the trustee...
