This trust holds about $1.05 million, managed by a bank trust department. Over the period reviewed, it paid total investment and administration costs averaging about 2.3% per year. A trust of this size, invested this way, at published fee schedules and ordinary fund pricing, would pay about 0.9%. The difference — roughly $14,000 every year — comes to about $140,000 in excess fees over the past decade. Counting the growth that money never had the chance to earn — assuming a 6% annual return, an assumption we state because every such number should carry one — the total cost to this family is approximately $185,000.
About half of that difference has a one-sentence explanation the family had never been told: the trust owns the expensive retail version of several funds when identical cheaper versions of the same funds were available to it the entire time.
Everything in this review was computed from documents the beneficiary already had: monthly account statements, the trust instrument, and the trustee's annual accountings. No one contacted the trustee. Where two documents should agree — the accountings and the statements — we tied them line by line; they tie. Fund-level costs come from the funds' own published disclosures, matched to the exact share classes held.
Several of the trust's fund holdings are retail share classes carrying embedded distribution fees. Each has an institutional twin — the same fund, same manager, same holdings — priced meaningfully lower, and available to accounts of this trust's size. Because the twin classes hold identical portfolios, switching classes is not an investment decision and typically not even a taxable event. The dollar difference is computed per fund, per year, in the workpapers. This exact pattern — same fund, cheaper identical class available, difference retained in fees — is one regulators have repeatedly required firms to repay when it went undisclosed.
The trustee's own fee sits somewhat above its published schedule tier for an account of this size; the accountings do not show the schedule applied. Separately, most of the funds held are the trust department's own proprietary products — permitted, but a structure whose economics deserve the daylight this section gives them. The report quantifies each layer; the layers, stacked, are how 0.9% becomes 2.3% without any single number looking alarming.
We checked the standing list. Does the trust instrument require these holdings? No — the instrument grants ordinary investment discretion; no retention clause covers the fund positions. Would switching trigger taxes that outweigh the savings? Not for the share-class finding — identical-fund class exchanges are generally not taxable events; for the broader holdings, embedded gains are modest and quantified in the workpapers. Does an income mandate explain the choices? The instrument's income provision explains the bond allocation; it does not explain paying retail prices for institutional-sized positions. Each check is documented whether it cleared or not.
Distributions were made on schedule and computed correctly against the instrument's terms — stated here with the same weight as the findings, because it matters: whatever these numbers show, this trustee is not withholding anyone's money. The trust's overall asset allocation is defensible for its mandate. A review that could only find problems would deserve no one's trust.
Three documents would close the remaining gaps: the trustee's current fee agreement or schedule as applied to this account; any revenue-sharing or servicing-fee disclosures for the fund holdings; and the investment-review records the trust department keeps in its ordinary course. This is the list a professional — or your attorney — would request first, and the report hands it to them organized.
If everything had checked out, this report would say so in numbers, and for many families that is the most valuable outcome there is. Where the numbers raise questions — as they do here — the next step is a signed opinion from an independent licensed professional, paid the same whether they confirm a problem or clear it. If something is seriously wrong, this report and its workpapers are built to hand directly to your own attorney. We do not choose the attorney, and we take nothing from anyone you hire.
And through all of it: your trustee is never contacted. No one is notified. This review is yours alone — share it, act on it, or never mention it again.