Trust & Estate Services

Fiduciary services from a firm you can depend on - with experts who take the time to understand you and your family.

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Team Meeting
Service Offering

Overview

Serving as your trustee is an important responsibility that we take very seriously.  It’s in our very name. Our commitment to a high level of personal service and attention is coupled with a clear fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of the trust.

 

Selecting an appropriate trustee is one of the most important decisions you make when creating your estate plan. You must have confidence that the trustee has the right combination of personal attributes, technical skills and administrative capabilities necessary to be a good steward of your estate planning goals as reflected in your trust instrument. You also want to have confidence that the trustee will be able to serve for the entire duration of your trust, which could span generations.

Given the broad range of skills necessary to fulfill the obligations of a trustee, a corporate trustee—a corporation legally empowered to act as a trust—may be the ideal fit. At Fiduciary Trust Company we have almost one hundred years of experience serving as corporate trustee, providing our clients the assurance that their trusts will be administered expertly for the long-term. Our clients take comfort knowing that future generations of their families will be advised by trust experts who understand their family dynamic and are committed to the highest standards of integrity, professionalism, and personal attentiveness.

New Hampshire law allows for investment and administration responsibilities to be clearly divided among trustees and third parties. In a directed trust, an investment advisor can have the exclusive duty to invest the trust’s assets while the trustee remains responsible for specific other aspects of trust administration. Fiduciary Trust of New England is able to serve as a directed trustee under New Hampshire law regardless of the grantor’s or beneficiary’s state of residence.  We routinely serve as trustee for individuals and families who are already working with another investment advisor, or have substantial nonmarketable or concentrated positions, but who would like an experienced and independent corporate trustee to administer their trusts.

Learn about New Hampshire's Trust Advantages

Some individuals choose to have family members or advisors serve as trustees. While this is appropriate in certain situations, it also means those individuals may be taking on administrative burdens and increased risks, given the complex and ever-changing tax, estate, and trust laws.

We offer a range of services to assist trustees in their duties. Trustees can take advantage of any or all of these services, depending upon their needs:

  • Investment management
  • Custody
  • Trust principal and income accounting
  • Beneficiary distributions
  • Bill payment
  • Tax filings
  • Regulatory and legal updates

We have extensive experience working with clients and their attorneys to migrate trusts to New Hampshire in order to benefit from the Granite State’s advantageous trust laws, including its various trust modification tools, when appropriate.

Learn about New Hampshire's Trust Advantages

We can help you determine the optimal private trust company design for your family and align our services to your specific needs.

Fiduciary Trust of New England can provide services for Civil Law Foundations, which appeal to clients in certain foreign jurisdictions as well as some Private Trust Companies.

As your personal representative, co-personal representative or agent for personal representative, Fiduciary will ensure that your estate is settled in a manner that is both timely and tax-efficient, while at the same time relieving a family member or friend of a potentially burdensome responsibility.

We provide access to the tax, asset protection and other benefits of New Hampshire’s trust laws to clients nationwide and abroad, through Fiduciary Trust of New England.

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Our Expertise

Capabilities

Benefit from our experience serving clients across generations combined with our trust insights from our experienced trusts and estates (T&E) legal team.

Top-Notch T&E Legal Team

Our 12-member, highly experienced trust and estates legal team helps clients benefit from the latest trust laws, working closely with their legal and other advisors.

Proven Permanence

Our private ownership structure combined with our financial strength has helped us serve clients for nearly 140 years, be continuously profitable for at least 75 years, and earn a 98% average annual client retention rate for the past decade.

Access to NH Trust Advantages

Through Fiduciary Trust of New England, clients can access New Hampshire’s favorable trust laws, which allow for no state income tax on certain trusts, perpetual trusts, trust modification, and asset protection.

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Simplifying the Complex

Do you have trusts with real estate, private investments, a family business, or other special assets? Combined trust and LLC structures? Other types of complexity? No problem. We can manage much of the complexity on our end to simplify your experience.

Trust & Estate Services Overview

We're highly skilled at managing the financial, legal, and tax issues that arise with trust administration. We also understand how personalized the family dynamics of intergenerational wealth can be. Our experience enables us to administer trusts of all complexity levels, often by taking advantage of New Hampshire's trust laws.

We are honored to be recipient of over 40 industry awards over the past five years.

Discover Our Insights

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Trust and Estates

Choosing the Right Trustee

When creating your estate plan, one of the most important decisions you must make is who will be the trustee of any trusts you create.
NH State House
Trust and Estates

Asset Protection Trust Benefits

New Hampshire has become one of the most progressive states amongst the group to permit the Domestic Asset Protection Trust ("DAPT") and, as a result, an attractive jurisdiction to utilize.
Family walking outside
Trust and Estates

Naming a Trust as IRA Beneficiary: Key Considerations

As the significance of IRAs has grown, it has become more common to name trusts as IRA beneficiaries. This article looks at key considerations for inherited IRAs and trusts.

Let’s start with a conversation.