Family Trust Companies: Preserving Multigenerational Wealth
Cindy Steeb
Senior Managing Director of Clearstead Advisors
MBA, JD, Author
In addition to her significant work with non-profit organizations, Cindy is an active volunteer with American Brittany Rescue having fostered over 35 dogs. She shares her farm in Valley City, OH with her four-legged family of Brittany and King Charles Cavalier dogs plus Arabian horses.
Kirby Rosplock
Welcome to the Tamarind Learning podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirby Rosplock. And today we're talking about private trust companies with Cindy Steeb. Now, Cindy has an incredible background. She has worked with three, four family offices already, and now she is the Managing Director at Clearstead. And so I'm thrilled to have you here, Cindy, and to learn more about private trust companies. Oh, and your book, which is right behind you.
Cindy Steeb
Yes, thank you. I do have my book here, Preserving Multi-Generational Wealth, and I talk about how private family trust companies can help do that and harmonize the family.
Kirby Rosplock
Incredible. So, Cindy, how did you come to write this book and tell us a little bit more about your background, about your passion for private trust companies.
Cindy Steeb
Okay. Thanks so much, Kirby. It's such a pleasure to be here today. And I wrote the book because I really believe in private family trust companies as a wealth planning strategy to really help families stay in control of their own wealth and be at the table together and also deal with trustee succession when they're doing multigenerational planning. And I kept getting the question, what can I read? How can I understand? And there wasn't a lot out there that was written, really for more of a layperson or a family business owner or someone who's had a liquidity event or created family wealth for them to easily understand and almost see themselves in some of the case studies to say, this is something I need to explore further. So what really drove me to write it was education.
Kirby Rosplock
Education. But it sounds like this journey goes farther back. Right? You're in Ohio, and this book really talks about Ohio private trust companies. Tell us about your relationship to the state of Ohio and how you got so nuanced there.
Cindy Steeb
Yeah. So I actually am born and raised in Ohio. So I've been a lifelong Ohio resident, although other than being gone for about ten years. But I've been involved in trust companies in Delaware, South Dakota, Wyoming. And then I wrote the very first version of what is now the Ohio Family Trust Company Act. And I've just seen what benefit a trust company can do for a family. So I actually received a call, and a law firm asked me know, I had literally just gotten back from a very arduous travel trip from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, back to Cleveland, Ohio, where I was president of an unregulated private trust company at the time. And the question was, we should do this in Ohio. Why can't we do a state statute in Ohio? And a little bit of the running joke was, I said, I'd love to be able to do it in Ohio. I'm tired of going to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And people were like, who says that? But it was just going to Jackson regularly. And it was just not an easy place to get to and from Cleveland. And so I said, I would love to.
Cindy Steeb
I am all in. And the family office that I was heading up at the time, the family member patriarch, also wanted to have fewer trips to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. So we decided, yes, I could get involved in it. And I'm biased. I admit it. I think Ohio is a great statute. But I do, because when I took the first version, I had 15 years experience working with trust companies, regulated and unregulated, and really sat in a conference room with all of those statutes around me and thought about what would make a great statute. And one of the things that was so important to me for Ohio is to be able to have truly an unlicensed, we call them unlicensed in Ohio, unregulated didn't. The legislature in here in Ohio didn't really like that word, particularly when we said unregulated private trust company. So we have unlicensed family trust companies here in Ohio, as well as licensed. And I thought it was really important working for families with family businesses, that it's really a lot of individuals serving as trustees in most circumstances. So family helping family. And that to be able to continue to do that without having regulatory purview and oversight was really important to me.
Cindy Steeb
So we truly have an unlicensed family trust company statute, as well as a licensed family trust company statute. And when I say truly unlicensed, what I mean is here in Ohio, the only requirement for an unlicensed family trust company in Ohio is to annually file an affidavit with the state of Ohio that just states you qualify to act as an unlicensed trust company. And that really has to do with you are serving, what we call here in Ohio, family clients. And for those familiar with the family office definition for the SEC, the family client definition here in Ohio is eerily similar to the family office. You know, I really think Ohio truly having that unlicensed opportunity for families to help each other and serve family. Now, I do suggest that it is a fiduciary and that they follow the formalities of a fiduciary, but they don't have the audits and being under the regulatory purview, which also can frequently increase the cost. So I think Ohio is a great statute. I do hear sometimes people will say, but Ohio has an income tax on trust. But if people dig just a little bit deeper, they'll realize Ohio is agnostic to where the trustee is. It really has to do with where the granter was domiciled when the trust became irrevocable, and where the beneficiaries were domiciled. So setting up an Ohio family trust company does not pull any family trust into having an income taxation here in the state of Ohio. So again, I'm born and raised in Ohio, so I'm really a midwestern Ohio person. But I do think it's a good statute that truly allows families to help family members and work together in that trustee role.
Kirby Rosplock
So give me a quick snapshot. If I'm a family and I'm trying to, ooh, should I set this up in Ohio? What would be maybe three or five criteria that would be, I want to go this unlicensed track versus a licensed track, or maybe I want to go to Wyoming or Delaware or South Dakota or Nevada or somewhere.
Cindy Steeb
I mean, things to think about. I tell families this all the time. The first thing you really do need to think about is licensed or unlicensed. And are you comfortable with a license? Where are you physically located? There is a level of you need to protect the sites of which you set up and avail yourselves of their law. So you can't really set up in Ohio and never come to, you know, all the clients I work with, this is something that we follow that the license requirement is that you have two meetings a year, and one of them is with a quorum physically present in Ohio. So think about where you would want to travel. South Dakota is regulated. Wyoming does have unregulated, as does Nevada. Tennessee has only regulated, and you can opt out of certain of the statutes. So thinking about what level of regulatory purview and where you may already have a nexus to. So I have a client from Maryland that has family and has some longtime connections here in Ohio. So when they were looking at statutes, they already had a reason to want to come to Ohio. So that's an added.
Cindy Steeb
I mean, that makes it an easier benefit to be able to know Wyoming geographically, although a beautiful state, and Jackson Hole is very beautiful, but it is a harder state to get to in making sure that you are protecting that connection, that you're availing yourselves of those state statutes. So I start with, are you interested in regulated and unregulated? Then let's think about where are you comfortable and do you have any type of connection or reason to want to go to any of these states that we could do the trust company meetings in fact, the Maryland clients happen to be Cleveland Browns fans. So every year we do the quorum know, physically present in Ohio, we just associate it with the. So, you know, they like to come back for one or two games a year. So it's thinking through some of those things and obviously agnostic to taxation here, as it would be in Wyoming and Nevada as well. But something you always want to make sure you're not inadvertently making any changes and you know taxation of the trust perspective.
Kirby Rosplock
And in terms of size, complexity, diversity of the family or the family's mean, what would be a typical profile that you would say would warrant? Oh, boy. This is a family that really needs, from a wealth planning strategic lens, needs to think about a PTC.
Cindy Steeb
It's so much smaller than a lot of people think. I actually start talking to clients at 20 million of assets and above. Some of that is more driven by the lifetime exemption. They want to do multigenerational planning. Is it a family that truly wants to keep a family business, family-owned across multiple generations? The nice thing about setting up an unlicensed trust company is you have more control over the cost. You don't have audit fees, you don't have certain fees that you have to pay to the banking regulator. So it really opens the door for a lot more flexibility. I actually have a client that has one trust. They have one trust that's a multigenerational trust. But when the patriarch passes, most of the assets of that family business are going to end up in the trust. So he wanted his children, who none of them are involved in the business. He wanted to sit at the table with them, the board table. They're all on the board. Three adult children and the dad and two independent directors. And he wanted to sit at the table and help his children understand what more about the company, what it means to be a beneficial owner instead of a director owner.
Cindy Steeb
He wanted them to understand that interrelationship between the grantor, the beneficiary and the trustee. It's a grantor trust. So we talked about grant tour trust and what that means and how that will change when it's no longer a grand tour trust. So he's used it really as a lot of education, and we've been able to make that very cost effective for him, even with just one trust set up. So I usually say it's something, it's why I wrote the book, so that it really can open the door to more families to at least understand the technique and then explore if it's cost-effective. And can you set it up, particularly in an unlicensed environment where you can still avail yourself of it. And the other thing I say, too, is it is where most family members are already, like, they're in the ship together already. They're beneficiaries of the trust, so they're in the ship together, and you don't have to have a family office. There are other resources that can help you do some of the compliance and the formalities and the accounting and tax returns and that type of thing. So I really wanted, with the book, to open the door that more people can understand it, because with the lifetime exemption set to sunset at the end of 2025, more and more families are thinking about planning.
Cindy Steeb
And I saw so many families that they would be doing planning, understand the income tax or the estate tax, the 40%, and look at and go, I want our company to continue. And that 40% federal estate tax could be crippling. But then when the question came up of who's the trustee? It's like the brakes went on and they stopped planning. I have a new client that it was exactly that. They had all the planning, they had thought through the trust, but they got stuck in that trustee question. And now we're setting up a family trust company, and the majority of the family members on the board being in control of that. We set up a family business asset committee that we can really narrow down the individuals who make the shareholder decisions about the company and make sure they have the right background and criteria to make thoughtful decisions on behalf of the family. Then we are full steam ahead in setting up an FTC for them. So you don't need 100 million or 200 million liquid assets. It's really much more attainable, and it's dissimilar from a family office in that you typically, unless some families want to start to provide family office services, but you don't have that expense where you're building, you're doing a ton of services.
Cindy Steeb
You start out acting as a fiduciary of a trust, and the things that you need to do for the trust typically are very similar to what you would do if you were an individual trustee. You should be doing trust accounting, you should be doing a trust return or the grantor letter if it's a grand tour trust, and you really should be documenting your decisions. That's something that I work with, clients I work with on. I have a policy and procedure manual that I've really thought through. If I was the individual trustee or if I'm a trustee, what would I want to know? And do it and check the box format so that we really can bolster any questions, even has demanding and control been given up? Are the right thoughts and considerations being made in making an investment decision or a discretionary distribution decision?
Kirby Rosplock
And I'm just curious. We're talking a lot about the technical underpinnings of who should do it and what's the size and what are the benefits of regulatory and unregulated, regulated or licensed or unlicensed. But let's get back to this other central premise that you're really focused on, which is this family harmony component. How can a family trust company potentially foster that? Why is this a good strategy?
Cindy Steeb
I've seen it work, Kirby. I get excited about this piece of it because I think if you're very thoughtful in this structure. So I joke with clients I work with. If you've seen one of my trust companies, you've seen one of the trust companies I work with, because it's really understanding what's important to the family, what's their culture. And I'll give you several examples of that. So what is the spousal involvement, and is the spouse involved? And I look at spouses, they can be value add, they can bring a lot to the table. And I have families I work with where spouses are at the table from the very beginning. Then I have the ones that I call them the in-laws, where they're in-laws and we've drafted, the spouse can be involved after they've been married for ten years, even having that conversation with the family, that this is a family business, let's be realistic. 50% of marriages end in divorce. It's not that we don't want your spouse involved, but we just want to know. It's a tried and true marriage. And they've seen how the family operates, and they understand what's important to the family before they have a seat at the table.
Cindy Steeb
And then, of course, we have some. I see the outlaws where they just had bad experiences and they don't want the spouses involved for whatever reason. But the big piece of the harmony comes in that transparency of discussion. So you talk about, is the spouse involved or not involved? But why? Or I have families. What motivated them is they have a family business worth a billion dollars and two adult children who really didn't know that. I mean, they had an inkling, but they really didn't know. And most of the assets were in trust. Very differing investment thoughts and strategies. And the family patriarch in his 70s said, I might be a little too late, but I need to do something. So the family is all mom, dad, both children are on the board. They have two independent directors. And he just wanted to start to sit at the table to share his intention, his vision, what he wanted for the company. We're doing education around the trust and the terms and even investments and how much should be invested. And there was some tension between dad and one of the kids about the child want to do alternative investing.
Cindy Steeb
He was big about risky alternative investing, but dad was very conservative. But part of the reason dad was very conservative is he fully understood the estate plan. There still needs to be some planning done to protect the family business and some more sales into defective grantor trust. Once we had the education around that, the son now is pushing dad to do more estate planning and know, kind of set aside the alternative investing strategy. But the other thing that this family did that I found fascinating was we worked together well, two things, actually, that he decided he wanted his long-term advisor on the board, so someone he trusted, someone the kids could get to know a little bit better. But he also interviewed and found a younger advisor that was closer to the kids age, who was also a director, independent director on the board and the thought process. There was this independent younger director the kids feel closer to. But he also can sit at the table with the grantor like the family patriarch, and hear directly from the family patriarch what is important from them, from a values perspective. What was the intention of the trust that they set up so he could understand that?
Cindy Steeb
So you're not losing the institutional knowledge, and the kids are getting better at being able to sit at the table with him and ask him questions, as well as the rising director. And the other thing that he did, that at first I was hesitant, but it's really worked. He decided that all decisions at the trust company have to be unanimous. And I looked at him and I said, that's a little dangerous. And he looked back and he said, it will force my family to keep talking. Now, I only have one family that does that, in fairness, but I just thought it was so interesting in how it's made the family keep talking. I see that in the transparency education piece. But also what I see is a trust company opens other avenues for family members to be involved in the family enterprise. So they may not have any interest in the business, but I've seen families where they were somewhat disengaged with the family, but they're really into investing. And even though there's not a lot to invest, they're sitting at the table and now reengaging with the family and families that make decisions together, talk together, learn more about each other and how to work together, I think just brings harmony together. They understand each other's perspectives much more.
Kirby Rosplock
When does this happen? Tell us about the timing of when a family might all of a sudden click and say, oh, I should be thinking about this kind of strategy. And then I would also ask, just the timing. How long does it take to get a trust company set up?
Cindy Steeb
Okay, great questions. And so as far as when should you do it? I have seen this. So I've been in the space for 23 years. I'm in my 23rd year to family office family trust company space. I keep going, how'd that happen? But it has. And when I first was involved in the family trust company space, what I did see is it was typically when you got to G three. And so when you get to G three, think about where you are. Then fewer people work in the company. Geographical disbursement, spousal influence. It's much more like herding cats because you have different perspectives. And now the ownership has started to splinter and you have to get more people to agree. Consensus can be tough. So now you've got more people to get to agree. But that's usually when families started to say, oh, there's got to be a better way to do this. How can we consolidate some of the trustee decisions about the wealth or the family business? In that 23 years, I have seen a complete change. Most of the clients I deal with are either the G one or very G two's.
Cindy Steeb
They're already starting to see that further. You go down the family line, more people have to have the consensus. And at G one or G two, they have that intention. Let's bring us together now. Let's get us at the same table now. And there are a few of us that have to agree. And many times you think about, you know, I call it boots under the same table. They've been having dinners. They've been talking about the company forever, and they're seeing that it isn't that way when you start to look at the third generation. So I say, let's try to get boots under the same roof again under the FTC structure. So I am seeing many more families look at and understand the FTC option much earlier. So G ones or G twos for sure. And as far as how long does it take? I am a lawyer, so I do have to occasionally pay the lawyer category. It depends. And what I mean by it depends, it depends upon how many people want to be involved in the decisions. I encourage families, if you're looking for this to be a positive harmony entity, I encourage families to really think carefully about what kind of committees do you want?
Cindy Steeb
What's the criteria to serve on a committee? What's the criteria to serve on a board? How do you reflect your family values and culture? An example of that could be on the board. I have clients that they require to be on the board. You have to have skin in the game. What's skin in the game? Skin in the game is they said you either have to have set up a trust and put this many shares of the family business in the trust, or you have to be a beneficiary of a trust of that many shares. So you need to have skin in the game and be involved in what we're trying to do to perpetuate the family business. So if you're thoughtfully considering those, it can take three months, six months of really thoughtful conversations to really think through. How do I make this a harmonious, positive influence for the family? That is an opportunity to bring the family together. And every family decides differently depending upon the age of children. Transparency to this point. Do you want kids on the board with you? Where do the spouses fit in? What about committees? I have families that do engagement committees or an education committee or family business asset committee.
Cindy Steeb
How can we take this entity to bring your family together? So those discussions sometimes can take a little bit of time. And somebody asked me the other day what was a downside. I said, you're talking to the wrong person to live for a downside, because I so believe in this entity. But I think the hardest piece for a lot of people is that beginning process where you have to make some of the decisions. But it's worth the time. I've seen it over and over again. It's worth the time to really think about what do I want, which committees, who would I want on them? How do I start to bring the education in and really be thoughtful about it? Makes a huge difference on the harmony side.
Kirby Rosplock
Well, two other follow on questions. I mean, I've seen clients do a tremendous amount of legal investigation right around jurisdictions and the appropriateness. And then, so I feel like the timing, to your point of it depends, has a lot to do with the kind of complexity you're trying to solve for. And there might be risk management questions like, oh, there's not a lot of precedent with this state or this jurisdiction or we have these kinds of entities and this might be challenging. So I do agree with you that in addition to the just family side of it. There's just a whole legal investigative opportunity that happens. And then the other piece I wanted to just kind of come back to is the role of the independent advisor, independent trustee, and how they can be a great harmonizer. I always say that the greatest way to get family to behave is to pretend like it's going to be recorded and it's going to be shown to their kids in ten years. And so every conversation. Right. If you operate as if it's being memorialized and projected to your grandchildren, people behave a lot nicer.
Cindy Steeb
I like that.
Kirby Rosplock
Tell me a little bit more about the role of that independent advisor and who should they be looking for?
Cindy Steeb
Okay, so the independent advisor, there's one committee that you know if you're setting this up properly based on the proposed IRS rights. So the legal side of it is you need to have an independent person on a discretionary distribution committee. That is such a key decision point and thinking about someone that the family may look at as someone who's in the trusted circle already. I frequently have whoever is serving as the current individual trustee a lot of times, particularly if it's an independent person, they will end up on the discretionary distribution committee because they understand the family values a lot of times, but they also understand the family business. So they bring some of that institutional knowledge. But you really want that position, that discretionary distribution committee, and usually it's either one or three people on that committee. So I've seen it go both ways. Some families just prefer one person, and that person's a touchstone. But one of the things that a lot of my trust companies are set up, that there's an individual, there's a separate discretionary distribution committee for each family branch. So each family branch can be involved in. Who is their kind of long-term trusted advisor?
Cindy Steeb
Who do they think their children would be comfortable or beneficiaries would be comfortable going to request a distribution and be able to explain to them. I always say in the ideal circumstance, and I've seen it happen, in the ideal circumstance, that discretionary distribution committee member becomes almost a know somebody who understands the family, someone who has a history with the family a lot of times. And I see beneficiaries reach out to the DDC member to brainstorm an entrepreneurial opportunity. Starting a business. Should we loan the money from the trust? Should the trust own the business? Should it be a distribution outright? But even more than that, I've seen DDC members take the time. Where's your business plan? Let's talk about your business plan? Let me give you some, you know, the independent advisors, it's really looking for someone that may have some history with the family, but someone who's really approachable by the family so that it becomes somebody with sound judgment. You don't want them saying yes when they shouldn't be or no when they should be saying yes and vice versa. So somebody you trust to really be thoughtful in making those discretionary distribution decisions.
Cindy Steeb
But what a great, you know, the situation I've seen, and the harmony side, where the individual was one gentleman, and the family had worked with him from an accounting perspective for years. So he knew the family well, and the next generation has really turned to him to use them as a sounding board. Use them as a sounding board. And then they had whole discussions around as a family, as each family branch. What do you think is the proper distribution to support education? And so he really tried to involve the family in getting their perspectives and getting them talking, but he was someone at the center of those conversations because he got to make the decisions about the distributions so I could really see those independents.
Kirby Rosplock
Yeah, that's such a great example. And I think, again, a lot of times when you think of maybe a family trust company, you're not thinking about how critical that independent trustee or independent party role is. And again, families largely can't do this by themselves. Right. They need their team of tax and trust and estate planning advisors all in their corner. And this is certainly a very nuanced element that probably a lot of estate planning attorneys aren't even necessarily well versed. So you need to reach out to the Cindy Steebs of the world and make sure you're getting the right supporting counsel and guidance as you're thinking about these structures. Cindy, this has been so much fun. I feel like we could talk for so much longer, but I just wanted you to have a moment to maybe close with one or two thoughts about your book, family trust companies and the role that they can play with family harmony. Any closing thoughts?
Cindy Steeb
I think it would be summarizing what I've already said. I could talk all day about these structures. I seen how they have brought families together, and I hopefully have shared some examples of them. And the book is designed for education, so it's an easy read. I wanted it to be what I called an airplane read. So it's only 144 pages, and I really try the last chapter, chapter six, or I guess it's a second to last chapter. They're all case studies, so they're case studies that I hope if someone picks up the book. They can see the art of the possible, or they can see challenges their family face, that perhaps an FTC may be part of the structure and they're not for everyone. I am realistic about that. They're not for every family, but there are certainly education. It's worth understanding how they can be structured. So that's why I wrote the book and hopefully, people can pick it up and it really helps them understand if this is something they should explore further. But working with advisors who have done it understand and can think creatively about how it can be a positive influence is important.
Kirby Rosplock
Well, thank you for memorializing the statute into the layperson's version. I greatly appreciate that as a non attorney myself and working with so many families who do have trust companies. So I think it's super exciting to learn all about what's happening in Ohio. I'm so grateful for your thought leadership, your dedication to this space, the work you do with complex families. Thank you so much for being with us today on the Tamarind Learning podcast we will have some more information right? How people can contact you obviously links to your book. So again, I think this is a great resource, especially because as in the layperson's world, there is certainly not a whole lot written to translate the complexity of a family trust company. And this is cutting edge. So, so grateful to have you here today.
Cindy Steeb
Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity to share my excitement enthusiasm about this option, to at least understand it. So thank you.
To purchase the book, Preserving Multigenerational Wealth click here
