What's your-2

“If you got it, flaunt it baby!” That’s one of my favorite lines from the movie The Producers by Mel Brooks. The same can be said of California Trustees (although not referring to their looks of course). For Trustees, if you have a special skill you are expected to use them.

For example, if you are an expert in investing, then you have to use those skills for the advantage of the Trust. And you will be judged based on your increased skills if anything should go wrong.  If you are a CPA or lawyer and you undertake Trusteeship of a California Trust, then you will be expected to use your professional skills to administer the Trust.

For example, lawyers should have a higher degree of knowledge of the Trust laws, especially Trust lawyers. So when a Trust lawyer acts as Trustee, those skills must be used. And if anything goes wrong, the Trustee will be judged based on a higher standard of skills than an ordinary Trustee.

Having a Trustee with special skills that helps in Trust administration is a great idea. For example, a Trust that is heavily invested in commercial real estate would do well to have a Trustee who is skilled in commercial real estate. Settlors oftentimes look for this type of expertise when selecting a successor Trustee.  Or at least they should look for this special skill when selecting a Trustee.  After all, many Trust lawsuits involve Trustees who did NOT handle Trust investments properly because they simply did not know what they were doing.

But that extra level of skill comes with a catch—a higher expectation under Trust law. So if you are an expert, you must be aware that your expertise can be a benefit to the Trust, or a burden to you if things go wrong.  You are not going to be judged as your average-Joe Trustee, but as your highly skilled Trustee.

The best protection against a lawsuit for a skilled Trustee (or any Trustee for that matter) is to have a process in place that you use to mange the Trust assets and make decisions.  The exact details of the process are not as important as having a process at all.  So many individual Trustees will make decisions and invest assets without any written game plan.  When investments take a dive, the Trustee is immediately accused of making a mistake and with no written process in place, the Trustee has nothing to point to as being the basis for the decisions that were made.

Having skills is a mixed blessing.  It is great for the beneficiaries, when those skills are put to good use managing the Trust assets.  But when things go wrong, those same skills may create a higher threshold to escape legal liability than would otherwise apply.