The following articles outline the many problems inherent in incentive trusts and offer a groundbreaking alternative: the Financial Skills Trust (FST). This new approach to trust design - co-developed with colleagues Jon Gallo and Eileen Gallo of Gallo Consulting  - integrates estate planning with what experts have learned over the past thirty years about the most important financial skills needed in adult life.  Further delineation of the principles and procedures behind the Financial Skills Trust and the Results-Oriented Trust Environment™  (ROTE™) will be forthcoming in 2012 along with sample draft language and client situations.  See links to Services for Families or Services for Advisors for more information on available training and consulting about the FST and ROTE™.

Not Your Typical Incentive Trust: The ROTE and FST: Part 1 and Not Your Typical Incentive Trust: The ROTE and FST: Part 2 - two companion articles from Journal of Financial Planning, April, 2011

The Use and Abuse of Incentive Trusts: Improvements and Alternatives - from the Proceedings of the 45th Annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, January 2011.

Many estate plans and wealth transfers fail, not because of technical problems with their design but because family dynamics and communication problems get in the way.  It is crucial for beneficiaries to be ready to receive wealth transfers. Otherwise, the best-laid inheritance plans of wealth creators and their attorneys will not succeed. This article, co-authored with colleague Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, discuss these issues for advisors and clients.

Ensuring Success In Wealth Transfers: Involving and Preparing the Beneficiary - IMCA Investments & Wealth Monitor, October 2010