The TRUSTEES are the legal owners of the TRUST’S ASSETS and are the people who decide what happens with those assets.

They make the day-to-day decisions on the maintenance of the TRUST and have unfettered power as to deciding when and how to buy and sell trust assets and make distributions to beneficiaries.

It is imperative to choose who you want as the TRUSTEES of your TRUST because they are the people who will be managing it for you. In a standard FAMILY TRUST scenario the husband and wife, partners or individual involved would normally be the TRUSTEES, and this is often in conjunction with an INDEPENDENT TRUSTEE.

It is crucial that TRUSTEES take their role seriously as they need to be aware of what is required to maintain and manage the TRUST and ensure that the Trust relationship is simply not disregarded when the TRUST’S ASSETS are being managed.

We have included a summary of what types of obligations TRUSTEES should be aware of in our commentary on TRUSTEE DUTIES.