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When clients ask whether all three children, or all their beneficiaries, or just three trusted people, should serve together as co-successor trustees, I generally recommend against it. It may feel like the "fair" or inclusive choice. In practice, it often creates more problems than it solves. Here are the primary reasons, along with several secondary considerations.
1. Trust administration is largely an administrative function, not a deliberative one
Serving as trustee is, for the most part, a series of administrative tasks: paying bills, filing tax returns, managing accounts, making distributions, keeping records. These aren't decisions that benefit from group input the way a business strategy decision might. Think of how most married couples handle their finances. One spouse balances the checkbook and manages the day-to-day accounts, while the other is largely uninvolved. That division of labor works well precisely because it eliminates redundancy and delay. Trust administration is similar. It's typically not a job where "two heads are better than one." It's best done efficiently by one accountable person who can act without coordinating every check, filing, and distribution with two other people.
2. Multiple trustees create political dynamics that damage family relationships
In my experience, this is the more serious problem. When three siblings or family members are named as co-trustees, two of them almost always align, by personality, geography, or just a pattern of who talks to whom, while the third gradually feels left out. This is rarely intentional, at least at first. Think of any three people you know, and you'll likely find that two of them talk more easily to each other than either does to the third.
Over time, the excluded co-trustee begins to feel that decisions are being made without them. They're presented with a fait accompli instead of being genuinely consulted. That sense of exclusion breeds resentment. Keep in mind, too, that everyone is still grieving, and emotions and sensitivities may be heightened. Resentment among co-trustees often escalates into full-blown disputes, sometimes over matters they would not ordinarily disagree on. Some of those disputes become serious enough to result in litigation or a will or trust contest. A single trustee avoids this dynamic entirely. So, usually, do two trustees with a genuinely good working relationship.
Additional reasons to avoid three co-trustees
- Delay. Unanimity or majority-vote requirements slow everything down. Banks, title companies, and other institutions often require all co-trustees to sign documents, even if the trust permits less or allows one trustee to bind all of them, which means routine transactions can stall while everyone waits on one person's signature or availability.
- Shared blame, regardless of fault. Each co-trustee has an independent legal duty to watch the others. Under most states' trust codes, a co-trustee isn't automatically on the hook for a colleague's misconduct simply by holding the title. But a co-trustee who fails to catch a serious breach, or fails to act once one comes to light, can be held personally liable for it. In practice, that means each co-trustee faces real risk for decisions they didn't make and may not have fully understood. Not because the law assumes shared guilt, but because the law expects each of them to have been watching.
- Cost. More trustees usually means more communication, more questions, more meetings, and more professional consultations to get everyone comfortable with a single decision. All of that adds administrative expense and, in some cases, more trustee compensation to pay for it.
- Diffusion of responsibility. When three people are equally responsible, each one tends to assume someone else is handling a given task. Important deadlines and duties can fall through the cracks as a result.
- Majority rule has a cost. With three trustees, disagreements can resolve into a 2-1 vote rather than genuine consensus. That outcome doesn't solve the political problem described above; it just formalizes it. The trustee on the losing end knows exactly who voted against them.
What I typically recommend instead
I typically recommend naming one trustee, with a full line of successors-- not just one backup, but two, three, or four, named in order, in case the first choice cannot or will not serve. Occasionally, two trustees make sense if they have a demonstrated history of working well together. Some family configurations invite two trustees by design: a representative from among the natural children serving together with a representative of the stepchildren, for example, giving each side of a blended family a seat at the table.
Naming a single trustee doesn't mean leaving that person unsupervised, and it shouldn't. The answer to "who watches the trustee" isn't a second or third co-trustee. It's oversight that doesn't require day-to-day coordination. In simple plans, beneficiaries take on this responsibility by reviewing decisions and reports and asking questions. A trust protector with the power to remove and replace a trustee, a beneficiary's right under most state trust codes to demand a periodic accounting or report, or a corporate trustee paired with a family member in an advisory rather than co-equal role can all supervise a sole trustee without recreating the committee problem this article is about.
I've written elsewhere about trust protectors and corporate trustees in the context of estate administration. The short version: supervision and shared administration are two different tools, and confusing them is part of why three-trustee arrangements go wrong.
If it's your trust, you are the boss. These are recommendations based on specific considerations, not hard-and-fast rules. You decide which considerations matter most in your estate plan.
