What Is a Trust?

A story that I like to tell to help explain what a trust is involves my family. I have three young girls ranging in ages from eight to two. We have a routine on Friday nights where we get together, make popcorn and watch a movie. My two year old is at the stage where she wants to be in charge of bringing the popcorn out to her older sisters. So, I pop the corn and fill up her containers and hand them to her. She brings them along to her older sisters, drops a few, sneaks a few on the way and eventually makes the delivery.

That is a trust, because it involves the four main ingredients necessary for a trust: You need a grantor, the person creating the trust, which was me. You need a trustee, the person in charge of the property in the trust — that’s my two year old. You need property to actually put in the trust, and that’s the popcorn, and you need beneficiaries to benefit from that property, and that’s my older daughters. That example, to me, is a way of showing that a trust doesn’t have to be scary, and really anybody can understand a trust.  

If you’d like to discuss whether or not a trust might be for you, please feel to reach out to me. For more informational videos, please visit our YouTube page.