What makes someone effective in the trustee role, and what responsibilities come with it?

Trustee Responsibilities (formerly Trustee Basics Module 2) explores the qualities, duties, and challenges involved in serving as a trustee. It connects personal characteristics such as integrity, judgment, objectivity, communication, discretion, empathy, and accountability with the trustee’s core fiduciary responsibilities: administration, investment oversight, distributions, and beneficiary education. Learners examine both positive trustee behaviors and red flags, while considering how expectations, family dynamics, and legal duties shape the trustee-beneficiary relationship.

What You’ll Be Able to Do on the Other Side

• Evaluate trustee behaviors against key characteristics such as integrity, objectivity, communication, and accountability.
• Identify red flags that may indicate a trustee is not meeting fiduciary expectations.
• Understand the trustee’s four core duties: administration, investment, distribution, and education.
• Ask clearer questions about trust distributions, investment oversight, reporting, and communication.
• Prepare for trustee-beneficiary conversations with greater awareness of role expectations and boundaries.

The Experience

This module uses examples, matching exercises, reflection prompts, case studies, and practical worksheets to connect trustee traits with real-world conduct. Learners review scenarios involving communication, conflicts of interest, distribution decisions, documentation, and beneficiary engagement.

The experience asks both trustees and beneficiaries to reflect on their expectations, assumptions, and communication patterns. Through readings, prompts, and cautionary examples, learners build a more grounded understanding of what fiduciary responsibility entails and how trust can be strengthened or damaged by trustee behavior.

Prerequisites: Introduction to Trusts

Estimated Completion Time: 1. 5 hours

Featured Resources:

• Trustee Worksheet for Preparing Conversations with Trust Parties, Tamarind Learning
• Trustee Candidate Checklist, Tamarind Learning
• Family Trusts: A Guide for Beneficiaries, Trustees, Trust Protectors, and Trust Creators by Hartley Goldstone, James E. Hughes, and Keith Whitaker