If you needed to ask a friend to help manage your assets, for example, to manage your estate or your investments, whom would you choose, and how would you make that decision? If you're like most people, you'd look for someone you could trust, someone with whom you had a personal relationship, someone who believes the same things you do.
That's what a good trust company does.
Related Blog: The Difference Between Using a Trust Company as an Investment Manager vs. a Broker
What Is a Trust Company?
Stated simply, trust companies help you manage or invest your money, as well as assist with estate and retirement planning. People work with trust companies when they need help managing their assets or transferring those assets to a beneficiary.
As Investopedia explains:
"A trust company is a legal entity that acts as a fiduciary, agent, or trustee on behalf of a person or business for the purpose of administration, management, and the eventual transfer of assets to a beneficial party. The trust company acts as a custodian for trusts, estates, custodial arrangements, asset management, stock transfer, beneficial ownership registration, and other related arrangements."
Specifically, trust companies:
- Follow your directions about how your assets are distributed after your death
- Help you reduce gift and estate taxes
- Help protect your money from lawsuits and creditors
- Help you choose a successor trustee, empowered to manage your trust after your death
- Provide sound guidance on how you invest your money
- Help you plan for your retirement
How Do You Choose a Trust Company?
Every trust company has certain advantages and disadvantages, and only you can decide which trust company is best suited to meet your needs and work collaboratively with you. In general, you want to work with a trust company that stresses maintaining a personal relationship with you and delivers what it promises in terms of quality investment management and estate planning.
Before choosing a trust company, you should ask yourself 3 questions:
- Will the trust company take the time to know my family and understand our needs?
- Will the trust company fully understand my goals, and is it committed to enforcing my decisions?
- How much will the trust company charge for their services?
About Caldwell Trust
Chartered by the State of Florida in 1993, we remain committed to giving our clients the estate planning and investment management services we promise. We believe we can fill a need that conventional, larger financial organizations (who typically charge larger fees) don't. Finally, we are committed to 3 central tenets:
- Our relationship with clients is personal, not transactional
- We consider ourselves traditional, upholding the values in which we believe
- We are committed to remaining independent, community-based decision makers
What Services Does Caldwell Trust Offer?
At Caldwell Trust, we offer 3 principal services to help our clients:
1. Trustees and Estates: we work closely with our clients to establish a trust which will give you and your family peace of mind. We offer flexible planning, whatever your estate planning needs and work hard to address your specific priorities and concerns. Our goal is to help you protect your assets now and far into the future.
2. Investment Management: at Caldwell Trust, we think investing your assets is a personal matter. This means working closely and collaboratively with our clients to ensure we build an investment management strategy customized to their individual needs.
3. Retirement Planning: we know that every client has individual needs as they plan for their retirement. To ensure we meet the needs of every client, we offer a wide spectrum of retirement planning services. Since retirement planning can be complicated, we make sure our clients understand all aspects of the retirement planning process, no matter how complex.
Conclusion
Choosing the right trust company for your investment management and estate planning needs can be confusing. To better understand our trust philosophy and learn more about your options, contact us today.
