Oct 20, 2026 · 32 min · 13 segments
Are you relying on outdated advice to protect your family's assets? In this episode of Probate Weekly, Bill Gross sits down with Casey Reagan from Keystone Law to debunk the most dangerous estate plan…
I think and sort of a misconception that I'm the trustee, so I'm in control and my word is what you have to follow and what I say goes.
Transparency is extremely important if you're a trustee, and really fairness is extremely important as trustee.
And I think that is where, from the trustee perspective, where opportunities can be missed.
If there's a lack of transparency and a lack of communication, even if you're doing everything else right, that breeds suspicion in the beneficiaries, and that can escalate, you know, a molehill into a mountain pretty easily.
So it would seem to me some of the primary then things to do, like the initial disclosures that are missed as far as who is entitled to distributions or who's entitled to more information.
So when somebody passes away, really most of the time in a living trust, the The trustor, the creator of the trust, is also the trustee up until their time of death.
Sometimes that changes if that person loses capacity prior to their death or something along those lines.
But generally, it's going to be, let's call it one of the parents, because that's usually what we're seeing, who is the trustee up until death.
Then it follows the terms of the trust in terms of who's the successor trustee.
Some people named two of their kids, some people named all of their kids, some people named one of their kids.
You got to look at what are my parents' assets, you know, gather that information.
Are those assets titled in the name of the trust? One thing that's very important, a lot of times it happens to be that one of the beneficiaries, you know, often a child of the trust or is living in a real property that the trust owns, And sort of how does that play out in terms of are they going to try to buy everybody else out of that property to keep it? Or how do we get them out of there if, you know, they're not willing to do that or they don't have the means to do that? And that's where you start to see the disputes arise.
But really, you know, and then you'll have trusts a lot of times that get changed maybe even in the last five years of somebody's life, even in the last month of somebody's life, you know, you'll have a trust that gets changed.
As long as it's all above board and done properly, a change to a trust is completely valid.
But if you're changing it to give one person more than another, you know, that's going to cause issues.
They've got to provide notice of what the true trust terms are to the people who are entitled to notice.
I think and sort of a misconception that I'm the trustee, so I'm in control and my word is what you have to follow and what I say goes.
Transparency is extremely important if you're a trustee, and really fairness is extremely important as trustee.
And I think that is where, from the trustee perspective, where opportunities can be missed.
If there's a lack of transparency and a lack of communication, even if you're doing everything else right, that breeds suspicion in the beneficiaries, and that can escalate, you know, a molehill into a mountain pretty easily.
So it would seem to me some of the primary then things to do, like the initial disclosures that are missed as far as who is entitled to distributions or who's entitled to more information.
So when somebody passes away, really most of the time in a living trust, the The trustor, the creator of the trust, is also the trustee up until their time of death.
Sometimes that changes if that person loses capacity prior to their death or something along those lines.
But generally, it's going to be, let's call it one of the parents, because that's usually what we're seeing, who is the trustee up until death.
Then it follows the terms of the trust in terms of who's the successor trustee.
Some people named two of their kids, some people named all of their kids, some people named one of their kids.
You got to look at what are my parents' assets, you know, gather that information.
Are those assets titled in the name of the trust? One thing that's very important, a lot of times it happens to be that one of the beneficiaries, you know, often a child of the trust or is living in a real property that the trust owns, And sort of how does that play out in terms of are they going to try to buy everybody else out of that property to keep it? Or how do we get them out of there if, you know, they're not willing to do that or they don't have the means to do that? And that's where you start to see the disputes arise.
But really, you know, and then you'll have trusts a lot of times that get changed maybe even in the last five years of somebody's life, even in the last month of somebody's life, you know, you'll have a trust that gets changed.
As long as it's all above board and done properly, a change to a trust is completely valid.
But if you're changing it to give one person more than another, you know, that's going to cause issues.
They've got to provide notice of what the true trust terms are to the people who are entitled to notice.
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