WHEN AN ESTATE PLAN TURNS INTO A BOARD MEETING (Part II)
The Kids Take Their Seats (The Board Meeting continues)
Uncertain, Texas – Imagine being handed voting power, fiduciary duties, and lifelong sibling dynamics AND with no Operating Agreement.
That is what happens on the other side of the emails.
Not guests at the meeting.
Board members.
The Role Nobody Applied For
No one ever explained it this way, but what Bob’s children inherited was not simply an interest in trust property. They inherited authority.
Authority to approve expenditures.
Authority to question timing.
Authority to insist on process.
And with that authority came responsibility. Responsibility to the trust. Responsibility to each other. Responsibility to act “by the book,” even when the book was written years earlier by people who were no longer there to interpret it.
They did not ask for this role.
They did not campaign for it.
They did not even know it was coming.
The First Questions
From their side of the table, the questions felt reasonable.
Is this an emergency repair?
Is the cost appropriate?
Should we get another estimate?
How do we document this?
These were not attempts to delay or control. They were attempts to comply. To do what trustees are told they are supposed to do: ask questions, exercise caution, avoid mistakes.
But what felt procedural on one side of the table landed personally on the other.
That is the nature of shared authority inside a family.
The Tie
Then the meeting stalls.
Two children.
Two votes.
No tie-breaker.
The trust names co-trustees, but it does not name a chair. It does not authorize unilateral action. It does not provide a neutral decision-maker when urgency collides with disagreement.
The parents, who used to break ties at the dinner table, are gone.The lawyer now receives emails that read less like legal questions and more like meeting minutes.
At this point, someone usually asks the question that reveals the real problem:
“Why didn’t Mom and Dad decide this?”
No Villains, Just Roles
Bob’s kids weren’t trying to be difficult.
They were trying to be correct.
“We’re trustees now,” one of them said.
“We’re supposed to ask these questions.”
And they were right.
And Becky was right to feel blindsided by the process. Both things can be true at the same time. That is what happens when governance arrives unannounced, wrapped in grief.
The Quiet Realization
Eventually, the roof repair was approved. The work was done. The immediate crisis passed.
But something had shifted.
Every decision now required consensus.
Every check required discussion.
Every disagreement lingered longer than it should have.
The trust did exactly what it was told to do.
Which is exactly why it failed the people living inside it.
The Part No One Plans For
Bob and Becky did not act recklessly. They had a trust. They named trustees. They followed the rules.
What they did not know was how those rules would feel when applied by the people they loved, at the moment it mattered most.
Nothing in the document explained that Bob’s children would be placed in a role they did not want any more than Becky wanted them there. Nothing warned them that love would be replaced by procedure, or that ordinary life decisions would suddenly require formal approval.
This is not a failure of family.
It is a failure of foresight.
PRO TIP
If your estate plan requires your children to unanimously agree forever, it isn’t a plan.
It’s a hope. We all know that HOPE is NOT a PLAN. IT’s an even worse Operating Agreement.
Why It Matters:
Good estate plans do not just plan for death. They plan for the meeting that follows.
They anticipate deadlocks.
They provide tie-breakers.
They remove children from roles that force them to choose between correctness and compassion.
This is not about control from the grave. It is about preventing governance from becoming an obstacle to living.
Good Heir Move:
If your estate plan names more than one trustee (or executor), ask yourself a simple question: Who has to say “yes” when something urgent happens (or when something needs to happen urgently)?