Governance Articles
Seven Risk Mitigation Strategies for the Successor Trustee or War Stories from a Trust Governance Expert Witness
Since 2013 I have been engaged to testify as an expert witness in the California Courts to opine upon the Trustee’s Standard of Care. Through these engagements I have compiled...
Investment Governance Best Practices for Business Managers (How to Watch the Hen House)
The Problem: You are a business manager(1), and it is either explicitly or implicitly the case that you are responsible for monitoring the activities of the investment managers that have...
Duty to Prudently Administer or “Check, check, double check, recheck” (1 of 12)
Duty of Prudence: Section 2(a) of the Uniform Prudent Investor Act directs, "A trustee shall administer the trust as a prudent person would…" But how is one to know how...
The Trustee’s Compliance Library
Trustees and beneficiaries don't always see eye-to-eye on issues of trust administration and governance. For the most part, the reasons for these disagreements are divergent beliefs about responsibility, duty, fairness,...
Case Study – Modifying Trust Distribution Rates
Last month the Anodos team worked on an interesting investment governance project that we thought you might find elucidating. Facts: A grantor setup a "Net Income" trust in 1987 for the...
A trustee’s duty to investigate conflicts of interest
Duty to Investigate: Section 2(d) of the UPIA directs, “A trustee shall make a reasonable effort to verify facts relevant to the investment and management of trust assets.” In response to this...
A Transitive Property of Fiduciary Duties?
If A = B and B = C, then A = C. This is the “transitive property of equality” that we learned in our remedial algebra classes so long ago....
An ERISA Trustee’s Duty of Loyalty
It’s hard to be an ERISA trustee. Many plan trustees have other pressing corporate responsibilities and few have the time or experience to become fiduciary governance experts. But fiduciary governance...
Johnny Depp v. TMG: What are a business manager’s duties of care?
The Question: What standard of care and what attendant duties does a business manager owe to their client? The Answer: It depends on what roles and services the business manager...
Trustee’s duty to develop an administrative plan or “If you don’t know where you are going you might end up somewhere else.”
Duty to Develop a Plan: Section 2(a) of the UPIA directs, “A trustee shall invest and manage trust assets as a prudent investor would, by considering the purposes, terms, distribution...