Trust Administration for Trustees and Successor Trustees

An executor administers a will and settles an estate, a role that typically wraps up within a year or two. A trustee manages a trust, which can continue for years or decades depending on its terms. The two roles have different duties, different tax filings, and often different timelines.

A successor trustee is the person or institution named to take over trust administration after the original trustee can no longer serve, whether due to death, incapacity, or resignation. Stepping in mid-trust often means picking up recordkeeping and filings you didn't set up yourself, which is exactly where most of our successor trustee clients start.

Trust administration covers everything required to manage a trust according to its terms: accounting for every transaction, filing the trust's tax return, communicating with beneficiaries, and making distributions correctly. The accounting and tax side is where we come in.

In most cases, yes. Trusts generally file Form 1041, separate from your personal return, and the trust may owe tax on income it retains, or pass income through to beneficiaries who report it on their own returns.

It starts with a call. We'll review where things stand with the trust and walk through exactly what needs to happen next.