071: Can banks do estate planning

can banks do estate plannings

Transcript

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Can banks do estate planning? Sure. This is a great question, and it's not completely easy to answer. There are a lot of banks here in the United States that have what are called trust departments. So in other words, if they are the trustee for their client, in other words, their client has a trust maybe it's a revocable trust or an irrevocable trust that trust department will be the trustee of that person's assets, of their trust. There are a lot of banks here in the United States that have trust departments or just flat out trust companies that are the trustees for their clients. Trust! makes sense? However, what we have seen in practice is that most of these trust companies and banks, financial institutions who have trust departments will actually want their clients to go to an estate planning attorney to get an estate plan done correctly. And then that way, the trust department or the trustees. All they have to do is administer the trust according to the terms that are in the trust. And you can see probably why most financial institutions want to do it this way. And that is just simply because they really don't want there to be a conflict of interest. In other words, you come to them and they do everything. They're doing the trust for you. They're doing the administration for you. They're doing all the finances for you. That could create in some people's minds a conflict of interest when one company is doing all of these different things. And I really think that you need to have checks and balances, right? We will help banks, trust companies and financial institutions who handle large sums of money or large assets for their clients. We do the trust part customized to that particular client based on conversations with their banker, their trust department, or their financial institution, and more specifically with what the client wants in their trust. And then we create that document and then we forward it on once it's executed properly, signed by everybody with witnesses and notaries, et cetera. We forward that document on to the financial institution, the trust company or the trust department at the bank, so that they can then administer the trust according to the terms of the trust. So can banks do estate planning? Probably. Usually what happens like I just said, is those institutions contact us or their clients contact us. We do the estate plan with consultation with all of their advisors. And then from there, the trust department at the banks takes over and then we step away unless there needs to be any changes made to the estate plan.