Insights · Trusts

Understanding Trusts: Selection, Structure, and Stewardship

By Jonathane Ricci · Wealth-orchestration attorney, licensed in New York and Michigan · Updated July 2026

Few instruments in wealth planning are as useful as the trust, and few are as casually misunderstood. A trust is not a product to buy; it is a relationship to design: one party entrusts assets to another, to be administered for the benefit of others, on written terms that can outlive everyone at the table. Designed well, that relationship can protect assets, organize succession, provide for vulnerable family members, and carry intent across generations. Designed carelessly, it becomes an expensive box nobody remembers how to open.

The anatomy of a trust

Every trust has three roles. The grantor (in some jurisdictions, settlor) creates and funds it. The trustee holds legal title and administers the assets according to the trust's terms. The beneficiaries receive the benefit: income, capital, or both, on whatever conditions the terms set. Many modern trusts add a fourth role, a protector or similar office, with defined powers to oversee or replace trustees and, where the governing law allows, to approve adjustments. The roles are the architecture; the drafting is where intent either survives or does not.

Revocable and irrevocable: the fundamental trade

A revocable trust can be amended or unwound by its grantor. It offers administrative continuity and, in many places, keeps assets out of probate, but because the grantor retains control, it generally offers little protection from the grantor's creditors and limited tax separation. An irrevocable trust surrenders that control, and the surrender is the point: assets genuinely committed to an irrevocable structure can achieve protective and tax outcomes a revocable one cannot. The choice is not which is better but which trade a family actually intends, made with clear eyes about what is being given up.

Common types and what they are for

• Living trusts for administrative continuity and incapacity planning.
• Family and spousal trusts for holding assets across a household or generation, with terms fitted to the family's jurisdiction and tax rules.
• Spendthrift and discretionary trusts for beneficiaries who need the benefit protected from their own creditors, or from their own season of life.
• Special needs trusts for providing to a person with a disability without jeopardizing benefit eligibility.
• Charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts for combining philanthropy with income and transfer planning; our strategic giving guide covers these in context.
• Insurance trusts for holding life insurance outside a taxable estate, where the relevant law makes that valuable.

What trustees owe

A trustee is a fiduciary. That word carries specific weight: the duty to administer the trust solely in the beneficiaries' interest, to invest prudently, to remain impartial among beneficiaries with competing claims, to keep real records, and to account honestly. Trusteeship is work, not an honor, and the most common quiet failure in trust planning is appointing a trustee for sentiment rather than capability, without asking whether they want the work or naming who succeeds them.

Selecting and overseeing a trust administrator

Whether the trustee is an individual, a professional, or an institution, the evaluation questions are the same, and worth asking in writing.

• What is your experience administering trusts of this type and size?
• How do you approach investment oversight within a trust, and who performs it?
• What will beneficiaries receive from you, and how often?
• How do you identify and handle conflicts of interest?
• What are all fees, and what triggers changes to them?
• Who succeeds you, and how is a transition handled?

Oversight does not end at selection. A well-designed trust builds in accountability: reporting obligations, a protector or review mechanism where appropriate, and a stated path for replacing an administrator who is no longer serving well.

Jurisdiction, cost, and the review calendar

Where a trust is established matters: trust law, tax treatment, reporting obligations, and available flexibility mechanisms differ meaningfully between jurisdictions, and cross-border families carry reporting duties in each relevant country. Costs, setup and ongoing, are real and should be weighed against what the structure actually accomplishes. And every trust deserves a revisit date: laws change, families change, and a trust reviewed on a calendar remains an instrument rather than becoming an artifact.

The orchestration approach

We do not draft trusts; qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction does. Our role is the coordination around them: ensuring the trust design fits the tax plan, the protection strategy, and the succession intent, briefing the drafting attorneys on the whole picture, and keeping administration accountable after the signing ceremony is forgotten.