Trusts and letters of good wishes are common in estate planning worldwide. Trusts establish long-term distribution patterns, managed by a trustee, while letters of good wishes provide personal details and intentions. These letters are not legally binding and cannot compel a trustee to act in any way.
Almost every country in the world has a system that allows people to transfer their assets, equity, and material possessions after they die. Trusts, and often letters of good wishes, are an integral part of that system in most countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada and most of Europe. Trust instruments are legal instruments that set the parameters for how the money and assets of an estate are to be distributed and used. A letter of good wishes is a more personal note from the deceased that accompanies a trust and states how the deceased intended the trustee to manage the trust assets. A letter of wish is not legally binding and cannot compel a trustee to act in any way, but it can shed some light on what the decedent was thinking when he set up the trust in the first place.
Fiduciary instruments are characterized by their ability to set up a model for the distribution of assets over time. Discretionary trusts stand on their own; whether established internally or by will, trusts are testamentary trusts. Unlike a will, which provides for the distribution of assets immediately upon death, a trust establishes a long-term distribution pattern. For example, while a will might designate a certain amount of money to be given to a grandchild, a trust might set up a scheme whereby that grandchild will receive a fraction of that amount each year for a specified period of time. Trusts can also be designed to distribute assets and funds upon meeting certain criteria, such as graduating with a higher degree or reaching a certain age.
Because trusts require careful attention to distributions over time, they require management by a trustee, an individual responsible for overseeing and executing the trust. The trust instrument appoints the trustee, who is usually a family member or trusted family attorney. The extender of a trust often includes a letter of good wishes from the trustee, addressed to the trustee, which seeks to clarify his intentions in more detail than the trustee itself could. Trusts are usually drafted in legal language so that the courts can enforce them. They name names, but are generally devoid of much personal detail or emotion. A letter of good wishes can fill these gaps.
Greeting letters are not legally binding under any country’s property laws. They are only instructive and a trustee can deviate from the instructions in a letter if he so chooses. The idea behind a letter of wishes is not to set out even more terms of a trust, but rather to explain what the trust intended to accomplish in simpler, more personal terms.
Some congratulatory letters express love or gratitude to family and friends and often provide reasons why certain distribution decisions were made. They lay out hopes for the future and ideas about how their possessions will be used; they justify the terms of the trust and explain the inheritance distribution scheme. Congratulations letters are actually just wishes. They may attempt to add additional terms or conditions to the trust, which a trustee may choose to follow, but nothing in a wish letter is legally enforceable. In other words, a disgruntled beneficiary can generally never sue for fulfillment of actions set forth in a letter of wishes if those actions are not also stipulated in the trust instrument.
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