Beneficiary Education: Helping Estate Plans Work Over Time
A technically sound estate plan can still falter if the people affected by it do not understand how it is supposed to work.
That is the premise of a new article Martin Shenkman and I wrote on beneficiary education.
Families often devote substantial attention to designing trusts, selecting fiduciaries, managing taxes, and protecting assets. Far less attention may be given to preparing beneficiaries to understand the structures they will eventually have to navigate.
That gap can have consequences.
A beneficiary who does not understand why assets are held in trust may experience protection as control. Trustee discretion may feel arbitrary. Governance structures may seem unnecessarily complicated. Predictable misunderstandings can harden into frustration or conflict.
Beneficiary education can begin well before full financial disclosure. It might include understanding trusts and fiduciary roles, financial and governance literacy, how distribution decisions are made, and the responsibilities that come with access to wealth.
The broader point is that implementation does not end when the documents are signed.
Martin and I explore these issues in “Beneficiary Education: Helping Estate Plans Work Over Time,” published in the October 2026 issue of Estate Planning.
The article is available here:
This article was originally published in the October 2026 issue of Estate Planning, a Thomson Reuters journal. The citation for the article is 53 Est. Pln. 20 (October 2026).
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