Posting from a throwaway because, well... it's awkward.
I found out a couple years ago that my (then fiancee, now) wife has a substantial trust in her name that she gains access to when she turns a certain age. I was uncomfortable about this, and didn't ask many questions, because I didn't want money to be a factor in our relationship - I love her for her and for us - so I acknowledged it and then didn't talk about it again until 8 years later, once we were married. We're very ok with our day-to-day money, both fulltime employed, no debt, everything running smoothly and both of us know where our money comes from, how much we have, and where it goes - and we make those decisions together, so things are ok there. It's this trust that is still wonky and outstanding that we need some help on - and while we're looking for a fiduciary flat fee financial adviser right now, I wanted to ask about the current situation here just to start to get a handle on it.
This was money left to her by a relative that no-one liked, and she's the last remaining survivor. She's been very uninvolved in it (to the point that she didn't even know how much was there until a month ago - she just knew it was 'a lot') - and because she couldn't have access to it until a couple years from now, hadn't done anything except stick the portfolio reports in a drawer when they showed up.
I'm uncomfortable with how little she and I know about the situation - tax implications, how it's being handled, what the portfolio breakdown is - and so I asked for the reports so that we could look over them and take them to an adviser. It's about $500k, and while I don't have the exact breakdown (and I would rather have a fiduciary looking at them than internet strangers, no offense internet strangers) - the one thing that stuck out was there was a net gain of $9k last year, or about 2%. That seems very low to me, knowing that the market had a record year, and that my 401k did about 12%, but is that normal for this type of account - a managed trust?
Just to know for peace of mind now while we're still looking for someone to do a comprehensive review - is she being taken to the cleaners with a poorly managed account, or are they doing the right thing by making sure that her initial capital is being maintained?
TL;DR Wife never paid attention to a managed trust that she doesn't have access to, we finally looked at it and she's got a 2% return on $500k account - is that normal?
Submitted June 05, 2018 at 09:24AM by NonreciprocatingHowl https://ift.tt/2sHpBCi
