Question:Â My wife and I have a family joint revocable trust, in which my daughter and her husband are the trustees. However, they do not want to do this job. My wife and I paid a lot of money, $36,000 for unlimited help, to our current elder lawyers, to get this trust and all our legal papers drawn up here in Florida. The lawyers who did our trust said that they could be the trustees, but it would cost $30,000 to $35,000 in addition.
My question is, even though our trust was prepared by them, would we be able to go to another kind of firm, that would possibly be a little less expensive (have no idea) to get professional trustees (and executors) without having the whole trust redone? We have no one else in our family, or close friends, who would be able, or even willing to do this. Most of them are our age anyway and have their own families and headaches.
Response: I'm sorry to hear about the situation with both your daughter and son-in-law and your lawyers. While it's not so unusual for family difficulties to arise, I've only recently heard of the practice of some lawyers to charge a high one-time fee for all estate planning or elder law matters for the client’s life. I question the ethics of this approach because the situation you face seems so possible -- that clients no longer want to work with the attorneys, or can’t do so if, for instance they move to another state. Or what happens if the law firm goes out of business or the lawyer retires?
But that doesn't help your situation. To answer your question, yes, you can switch trustees without having to completely rewrite your trust and other estate planning documents. To the extent that the new trustees require some tweaks to your documents, your prior law firm should make them at no additional cost since it sounds like you paid a flat fee for a lifetime of estate planning services.
There are a lot of private trustees who you can hire. These can include other law firms, banks or trust companies. Typically, they charge either an annual fee based on the value of the trust, often between 1.0% and 1.5% per year, or by the hour, the latter more typical for lawyers who serve as trustee. It’s hard to tell whether the ultimate cost over many years would be more or less than the flat fee your lawyers are offering. I would recommend researching what trustee options might be available in your community. In fact, your existing law firm should be able to advise you on this.
Harry S. Margolis practices elder law, estate and special needs planning at Margolis Bloom & D’Agostino in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and a Fellow of FreeWill.com. He is author of The Baby Boomers Guide to Trusts: Your All-Purpose Estate Planning Tool and answers consumer questions about estate planning issues at www.AskHarry.info. Please post your estate planning questions there.
www.AskHarry.info
