Growing a Healthy Trust Ecosystem

Significant inheritance by no means guarantees a full, happy, and truly prosperous life, which has led us to ask:

What can be done to enable beneficiaries to thrive in the unique circumstances of inherited wealth?

The pursuit of this question has led us to develop practices that are having a positive impact on the lives of our clients and their families. Our successes, and our struggles, have led us to ask:

Who else is thinking deeply about this, and what practices are they implementing that are working?

So, we decided to launch an experiment. We have created this site as a forum of questions and ideas, a repository of tools and resources, and a place where successes and challenges are presented and analyzed.

We envision a world in which trust ecosystems are healthy and trusts are truly beneficial, contributing to the health and wellbeing of beneficiaries, their families, their communities, and the world. The work of trust ecosystems (which includes trust creators such as grantors, settlors or testators, beneficiaries, trustees, distribution and investment directors or committees, trust protectors, and all the advisors including attorneys and accountants, investment and financial advisors, and family office and private trust company executives) tends to be focused heavily on the investment and administration of trusts to ensure the successful preservation, growth, and perpetuation of assets. While this work is vital and unquestionably valuable, our interest here is in distribution, for it is in distribution that a new cycle of investment is initiated. We believe that thoughtful and intentional investment in families, and in social, intellectual, and human capital accounts, creates conditions in which beneficiaries can be truly prosperous.

What you find here, and what you share, is an act of radical generosity. The contributors below have collaborated to produce materials that we are providing free of charge or of any copyright protection. We merely ask users to contribute (via the Submissions page) feedback, suggestions, case studies, and related materials and resources for curation and potential addition to this website. We want this site to be a continual work in progress. Every family and circumstance is different and has its own unique idiosyncrasies. We do not intend to come up with a unified system or method for all situations. Rather, we seek to shed light on all the potential nuances that may arise, and to offer various strategies for how to approach them.

We are inspired by the possibilities for all of us when beneficiaries of significant wealth are thriving. Thank you for the work you are doing, and for the contributions you offer for the improvement of our work.