A recent post on this blog discussed the responsibilities that a resident of Saint Paul, Minnesota, would have were he or she to agree to be a trustee of a Minnesota trust. As a person reading this post could conclude, trust administration involves many detailed tasks that can take a lot of time and effort.
Still, many trustees agree to step in and handle these duties for a family member or close friend, oftentimes even without compensation. While family members, friends and other beneficiaries of the trust should be grateful for a trustee who tries hard to meet his or responsibilities, such is not always the case.
Therefore, a trustee may find himself or herself entangled in litigation, and even facing the possibility of having to pay out of his or personal funds, simply because he or she agreed to help out a friend or relative. Sometimes, these types of lawsuits are completely meritless, but regrettably must still be taken seriously.
Other times, though, a well-intentioned trustee could through ignorance or an uncharacteristic lack of judgment do something or overlook and important task that makes it appear that the trustee is not handling the trust funds responsibly.
In either type of case, our law office can help the trustee protect both his or her own reputation and the overall financial health of the trust. For those lawsuits that are unfounded, we will do what we can to achieve a quick and cost-effective outcome. For those cases in which a trustee may have inadvertently acted improperly, we will do what we can to mitigate the damage and come to a settlement.