Have you been named as beneficiary of a family trust? Does it feel overwhelming? Are you looking for some practical information to get up to speed fast? Here’s an essential guidebook for you. Written by an expert who has more than 25 years’ experience working with families to create, administer, and benefit from trusts, this primer is a “go to” resource for anyone who has been named as a beneficiary. The text incorporates a worksheet throughout that can help you organize information, thoughts, and questions, to set you up for a positive, productive experience. Key concepts are distilled to their essential elements. The tone is encouraging and easy to read while maintaining a sense of the seriousness, and importance, of the beneficiary’s role. Also helpful for anyone setting up a trust as part of an estate plan or for a trustee of a family trust.
Description
In Patricia Angus’s simple, easy to read style, The Beneficiary Primer unpacks all of the legal, financial, and emotional issues that trust beneficiaries face. Most importantly, it organizes in four sections everything a beneficiary needs to know so that they can truly “benefit” from the trust. Every professional trustee should provide this book to their beneficiaries to foster a healthy and collaborative relationship.
—Gail Cohen, Chair and General Trust Counsel of Fiduciary Trust Company International
The Beneficiary Primer will soon be a gift that every trustee, trust settlor, investment advisor to trusts, wealth advisor, psychologist, and parent of a child who is or will be the beneficiary of a trust will hand to the beneficiary at their first meeting about the trust and will use to evolve their relationship so the beneficiary declares the trust a blessing and not a burden.
—James (Jay) E. Hughes, Jr., author of Family Wealth: Keeping It in the Family; and with Hartley Goldstone and Keith Whitaker, Family Trusts
In The Beneficiary Primer, Patricia Angus tackles how to make the most of being a beneficiary of a trust with her trademark sense of humor. She provides a helpful framework for the legal concepts that form the basis of trust planning and summarizes in plain English the different types of trusts and how they work. Aside from explaining these technical concepts in an easy to understand manner, she explores the often-overlooked emotional challenges beneficiaries face. This book is a must read for trust beneficiaries who want to learn their rights and responsibilities and take full advantage of this opportunity.
—Susan R. Lipp, Editor in Chief, Trusts & Estates
In my decades of experience as a trust lawyer, I’ve found that beneficiaries would benefit more from their trusts if they understood the legal underpinnings, roles, responsibilities, and relationship issues at the core of this powerful legal structure. The Beneficiary Primer does just that for beneficiaries of family trusts.
—Don Kozusko, Partner, Kozusko Harris Duncan, and Fellow, American College of Trust and Estate Counsel
