Your Family's Best Interests Deserve the Best Advice
When it comes to managing your assets during your life or upon your death, it takes more than family and friends to make the best decisions. It takes the experience and expertise of a corporate Trustee or Executor.
About Trusts
Throughout your lifetime, you have worked to provide security for your family, community, and your future by paying attention to your financial health. When you wish to safeguard the future of your finances to ensure care for your loved ones, it can be wise to seek legal structures that provide financial protection. One method of doing so is to establish a legal arrangement called a “trust.”
A trust is a legal entity whereby a person (trustor) designates another person or entity (trustee), to prudently and ethically manage the property conveyed to the trust for the benefit of themselves or others (beneficiary).
Your trust can be revocable (subject to change) or irrevocable (unchangeable), and management of your trust can begin during your life or following your death. Trusts are established to accomplish objectives unique to your personal circumstances and needs.
Why Establish A Trust
There are many reasons to set up a trust based on circumstances unique to you. If you answer “yes” to any of these following questions, then you should consider establishing a trust.
- Would you like to take advantage of available tax benefits and protect your family’s wealth for generations?
- Are you financially responsible for young children, aging parents, or other family members with serious illnesses or challenges, or anyone else who would financially suffer without your assistance?
- Do you have any type of assets such as minerals, farm, ranch, valuable collections of any type, or significant property that would need professional management if you could no longer do so?
- Do you prefer to focus your time, talent and energy on endeavors besides managing your own property or finances?
- If something happened to you, would your heirs have the education, background, talent, time, and skill to manage your property wisely and according to your wishes?
- Would any personal conflict among your heirs create unnecessary problems?
- Do you value your privacy and wish to keep all of your personal financial information confidential in case of your incapacity or death?
- Do you value the work being accomplished by an educational institution, religious organization, hospital, or other charity, and would you like to make a tax advantaged transfer or legacy gift to them?
Why You Need A Professional Trustee
It is difficult at best for one individual to posses all of the characteristics necessary to manage a trust. Our trust management professionals are trained and educated to fulfill the duties of a trustee and deliver responsive service to the client.
Trustees must:
- Understand accounting, laws, court decisions and regulations pertaining to trusts, insurance and taxes
- Be experts with investments and the management of all types of assets
- Be responsive, proactive and impartial while acting in the best interests of each client and beneficiary
- Always protect and preserve the trust property
- Be available, attentive, reliable, and ethical
- Assume potential liability for the mismanagement of a trust account
Why First Financial Trust
At First Financial Trust, your needs are always our first priority and objective:
- We have been acting as fiduciaries since 1927 and have built a caring culture with highest ethical standards.
- We are highly trained, well-educated professionals who are committed to delivering the best service in the market place.
- While many other institutions will only manage financial assets, we offer comprehensive estate administration services, trust management services, employee benefit services, investment planning and asset management services , as well as oil and gas services and real estate management services.
- Our professional investment and asset management team has proven successful with the strategies we custom design for our clients.
- We share in the financial strength and support of a holding company and community banks where the importance of our service is understood and respected.
While individuals serving as a trustee could become ill, die, go on vacation or just decide they don’t want to work on the trust, we will always have someone dedicated to your accounts. We are examined regularly through regulatory audits, as well as through internal and external examinations.