QUESTION
Does a personal letter to a trustee need to be filed if it contains instuctions to gift a benificiary?
Asked on May 20th, 2013 on Trusts and Estates - California
More details to this question:
The draft copy of the will my father showed me at the time he filed his trust papers in 2006 had a very specific set of instructions that were to be carried out by my brother, as appointed trustee of my father's estate. These instructions included $10,000 to be gifted to me which never was, however everything else was done as my father wished. These wishes were not within the trust copies supplied to me by my brother. When I wrote my brother for an explanation, his reply was the instructions he carried out were within a personal letter written to him from my father and voted upon by all my siblings during a meeting that excluded me and that the letter was not a legal part of the trust. My brother will not provide a copy of this letter to me and I am sure my father meant for it to be included with the trust or he would not have written them in a will.
1 ANSWER
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Your brother, as trustee, is required to give you a copy of the trust upon your demand. You should ask for it and all trust amendments. If the trust documents provide a $10,000 gift for you, then a letter of instructions - one that isn't an "amendment" to the trust - doesn't affect the fact that you are to receive $10,000. If the trust provides a gift to you and your brother, as trustee, fails to distribute that gift to you he could be held personally responsible.
Without actually reviewing the documents, it is not possible to determine if a set of instructions is a trust amendment or merely a list of non-binding wishes and desires. The trust itself may provide rules on how it is to be amended, for example. Notarized documents should be amended with other notarized documents. Trust amendments should indicate that the person making the amendment intends for it to be an amendment. "Should" means it is good practice to do that, but not absolutely necessary under all circumstances.
Answered on May 21st, 2013 at 6:53 PM