How a Specialized Trustee Keeps Complex Assets Productive for the Next Generation

Key Takeaways:
  • A knowledgeable trustee can allow your family’s unique assets, such as a farm, mineral interest or business, to continue to provide for family members.
  • Depending on the asset, a trust company can handle everything from managing day-to-day operations to ensuring liability protections are in place.
  • Working with a trustee who has agricultural experience can free absentee landowners from operational burdens.

 

Keeping a farm, mineral interest or business in your family can be a way to continue your legacy and provide for the next generation. But when your children live far away, the burden can outweigh the blessing.

Managing these assets require constant oversight and, often, specialized expertise. This is where working with a trust company familiar with these types of assets can help.

Here’s how a knowledgeable trustee can help keep your family’s legacy alive.

Managing Farming Operations and Risks

Farms don’t run themselves. Successful operations require constant supervision, risk management and informed decision-making. For absentee landowners, this can feel overwhelming, especially when they no longer live near the farm or are directly involved in agriculture.

A trustee with agricultural experience can step in to support the operation and protect the beneficiaries’ interests. This includes overseeing the farm’s structure, whether it’s cash rent, crop share or a tenant agreement, and ensuring the arrangement is both fair and profitable.

A trust advisor can evaluate these arrangements and facilitate the one that makes the most sense and money for the trust.

When we provide this service for our farming families, our goals are two-fold:

  • Avoid unnecessary risk for trust beneficiaries
  • Enable the farm to produce as efficiently as possible

Because absentee landowners cannot be physically present, we regularly inspect farm properties as well. We make sure the tenant is farming correctly and doing the things that need to be done. (Yes, many of us at Adams Brown Trust Solutions come from farming families.)

Farming comes with liability and risk too. We ensure liability protection is in place and take steps to remove risks, both for injury and crop failure. We also make sure farms are enrolled in USDA and government assistance programs that provide aid for crop insurance and disaster protection.

Overseeing Mineral Interests Across Multiple States

Mineral interests can be valuable, but they are not passive assets. Some families have mineral interests scattered all over the United States. Keeping track of and managing these interests can be a significant burden for beneficiaries, especially for those who don’t have a background in oil and gas.

A trust advisor can take this burden off beneficiaries’ shoulders by taking care of everything from the paperwork involved in owning a mineral interest to oil and gas property management.

When it comes to property management, it’s important to make sure you’re working with a good company. You need one that will take care of the property and pay you the royalties you’re supposed to receive. A trust advisor can help to make sure your property management company is operating in accordance with your beneficiaries’ best interests.

Providing Stability for Family-Owned Businesses

Small businesses carry the weight of a family’s identity, relationships and livelihood. But when an owner passes without naming a successor, or when heirs are not in a position to step in, the business faces operational and financial risk.

A trustee can serve in this role until the beneficiaries decide to sell or keep it going.

This could involve everything from handling payroll, taking care of employees, paying vendors and collecting revenue. Depending on the company’s ownership structure, a trust advisor could be responsible for its operation or even serve on the board of directors.

We work closely with our in-house accountants who specialize in agriculture, mineral interests and closely-held businesses. This integrated expertise helps ensure decisions support the business’s viability and uphold the grantor’s intent, whether that intent is to keep the business running or prepare it for sale.

Continue Your Legacy and Provide for Your Family

If you hold unique assets, it’s important to how they’ll benefit your family in the future. A trust company can play a key role in ensuring they remain productive. Your beneficiaries are free to focus on their lives while reaping the benefits you’ve established.

Reach out to an Adams Brown trustee to learn more about how we can help protect your family’s legacy.