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hey there estate planning attorney paul rabelais and in this video i'm going to go over six different powers that a trustee of a trust has often times people come in the office they're like are they called whatever they say paul i'm involved in a trust and the trustee of the trust just just did blank does that trustee have the power to do that so that's what we're going to talk about six different powers that a trustee has in another video that i'll link to i think there uh we i talked and i made it recently i talked about the various i think it was five different duties of a trustee but in this video we're going to talk about powers now i'll start out by saying that the nature and extent of the powers of a trustee are initially determined from the trust instrument provisions so if you're wondering whether a trustee has a power to do something the first place you look is the trust instrument and many trust instruments have whole sections of trusty powers however some trusts say that the trustee will have the powers that are described under trust law and so when a particular power that you're questioning isn't um provided for in the trust instrument you have to look at the underlying trust law so i'm i live and work in our great state of louisiana and so as i talk about these various trusty powers that our louisiana trust code provides just you know understand that your state may have different rules on the various trustee powers okay so here we go six different powers i'll also explain uh when i get to certain powers where people like to deviate from what our trust law provides i'll talk about that as well first one is the trustee has the power to incur expenses you know that's kind of typical you know but it really only the expenses that are necessary to carry out the purposes of the trust sometimes trustees need to pay for investment advice legal advice tax preparation sometimes trustees have to pay for maintenance expenses regarding trust assets that they are the trustee over so it is not uncommon for trustees to have to incur expenses to fulfill their role as the trustee number two leases so a trustee may execute a lease of of trust property as long as the terms are reasonable and and here's a little caveat even it's okay for a trustee to execute a lease of trust property even if the lease extends beyond the term of the trust so just be aware of that all right number three here's where we're getting into what you know some stuff we see a lot sales the trustee may sell trust property unless it's forbidden in the trust instrument or if it appears from the trust instrument that the property is to be retained in kind now there are some prohibitions on the person who creating the trust providing that trust assets will never be can can never be sold for example the set lore which is the person who creates the trust can't forbid a sale of what's called immovable property really real estate the person who sets up a trust can't forbid a sale of a movable property for a period of 15 years from his death so let's go back and let me give an example before i get on to number four of you know there's so many different kinds of trusts and really these rules i would say don't apply to the avoid probate revocable trust because the set lore is the trustee and the settlor can at any time revoke the trust put everything back in his name so we're talking really referring to irrevocable trusts and and there's many many different kinds of that i'd say maybe the most maybe the most common form of irrev irrevocable trust is when let's say a husband dies and he doesn't want to leave his entire estate outright to his wife because he's thinking he doesn't want his wife to then get remarried and leave his estate to her second husband so what he does he wants to provide for his wife but also he wants to protect his children so he says he leaves his estate to a trust for the benefit of his wife for the rest of her lifetime and then when she subsequently dies all of those trust assets revert back to his children and his wife may or may not be the mother of his children but the husband is comfortable arranging for leaving his estate to a trust because he has two goals one he does want to provide for his wife but two he also wants to protect his children so that they kind of automatically get it when that surviving wife passes away and she can't leave it to other people so that's a that's a common trust it's it's irrevocable after the husband dies so all of these trust powers rules apply and now who's going to be the trustee of that trust it can be any one of a number of people maybe the surviving wife is the trustee of the trust maybe one or more of the children are the trustee of that trust maybe the surviving wife and one of the children are co-trustees of that trust maybe some other individual is the trustee of that trust maybe a corporate trust trustee is the trustee of that trust cause so it could be any any any uh multitude of options regarding who the trustee is and all these trustee powers rules apply to that trustee so going back to our power number three where a trustee has the ability to sell trust assets however the set lore the husband uh in our in our example can cannot say after i die this piece of land the trustee can never sell it it can only uh he can he can only prohibit the sale for 15 years after his death okay trustee power number four and our environment of lawyers are everywhere and everybody sues everybody for everything trustee power number four enables the trustee or gives that trustee the power to compromise submit to arbitration or abandon claims affecting trust property makes sense we're a very litigious society trust trustee power number five is the kind of a common sense one a the powers with respect to stock so a trustee can exercise all of the powers that holders of shares of stock or other securities can have including the right to vote those shares either in person or by proxy all right and then trust power number six involves uh and there's several parts to this number six the the powers of multiple trustees now here's one where we often see um pete the set lores of trusts saying you know what i realize that's the law that would apply if i don't specifically designate something different but i want to specifically designate something different and deviate from what our trust code says trustees powers would be in the event there are multiple co-trustees so let's take a look at that first if there are two co-trustees our trust code says the powers that shall be exercised by both of them unless otherwise provided by trust instrument so sometimes maybe a parent says i'm leaving my estate to a trust or maybe a parent is setting up a revocable living trust and providing that when that parent dies the trust becomes irrevocable for the benefit of four or five children and names two children as the co-trustees of that trust after the parent dies so our trust code says those trustees may act together however sometimes parents will say you know what i live here in louisiana one of my children who i wants to be want to be a trustee lives in florida another one lives in california i want them to be co-trustees but because you know people are all over the place let's provide that either of them may act independently they get along great there's not going to be any conflict let's provide that either one of them can act as a trustee instead of both of them having to act together so we see that sometimes now moving on when there are three or more co-trustees sometimes parents say i'm leaving assets to a trust for my three children i want all three of my children to be the co-trustee so when there's three or more co-trustees the powers that uh powers of a trustee may be exercised by a majority of the trustees and again some set lures deviate from that they sometimes they'll say i'm going to name three co-trustees but if they have to take some action i want all of them taking that action together all three of them not just a majority so sometimes people like to deviate from that specific trusty power provision in our trust law and then occasionally we see people wanting to which which is allowable under our trust law sometimes a set lore of a trust will will have multiple more than one trustees but they want to confer different powers upon different trustees so for example somebody may set up a trust and and they say i want this trustee handling all of the investment decisions relating to you know securities and other investments and i want this trustee handling everything related to the real estate the farm the immovable property whatever you want to call it so it is permissible for a set lore of a trust to confer different powers on different trustees okay so i think the bottom line here is a lot of people just don't realize that there are specific rules related to the powers of a trustee i think many people think that there aren't rules and so you know a trustee can kind of do whatever they want to do but that ain't the case there are specific rules and uh that what makes it a little bit challenging is often the neither the beneficiaries nor the trustee can determine what the trustee's powers are by merely looking at the you know four corners of the trust instrument so when they can't determine a trustee's powers by looking at the four corners of the trust instrument or or however many pages it is then they have to look to applicable trust law to determine whether a trustee uh does or doesn't have a certain power so there you go this you know if i could just get everybody who's involved in a trust to watch this video it sure would eliminate a lot of questions or would have eliminated a lot of questions over the years to eliminate more questions you want to make sure you smash obliterate the like button that way you'll be telling youtube hey youtube you know when i pull up your site why don't you suggest maybe a few more of paul's videos so that so i can get more informed about my estate and then you have if you haven't already done it hit the subscribe button and the notification bell that way you don't miss anything as i keep over the coming days months and even years creating more practical useful estate planning content so that you can know exactly what you need to do to protect yourself and your loved ones okay i'm paul rambla you have a great day take care