Parents, Trustees and Beneficiaries: Who Decides What’s Best?

One of the more emotionally complex dynamics in family trusts arises when professional trustees are asked to make decisions that, in most families, would typically fall to the parents.

Should a young adult beneficiary receive funds to support a business idea?
Is a particular lifestyle expense 'reasonable'?
Has a beneficiary demonstrated enough maturity to manage more responsibility?

When these decisions shift from the family kitchen table to a professional boardroom, it can cause tension — especially when parents may not have any involvement with the trusts themselves and can feel disempowered or out of the loop.

Professional trustees have a duty and role set out in the trust documents but, in fulfilling this, they may inadvertently cross a family line — or get caught in the middle of intergenerational expectations!

Here are three things you can consider when establishing a trust to help reduce tension and promote healthy long-term outcomes:

Clarify roles early on
Be explicit about who is responsible for what — and how parents can remain appropriately engaged without undermining trustee authority.

Create space to be heard
Establish mechanisms (like beneficiary advisory committees or regular trustee-beneficiary-parent meetings) that give beneficiaries and parents a voice in the process — even if they don’t have formal decision-making power.

Invest in education, not just distribution
Consider funding programmes that help parents and beneficiaries build financial literacy, decision-making maturity, and trust fluency — so conversations about money aren’t just about “yes” or “no”, but about “why” and “how”.

Trusts are legal instruments — but they live within human relationships. The more we design them with empathy and foresight, the more likely they are to serve families well across generations.