Our parents have a trust account at Vanguard. After they passed away, we started the process of getting on the account as successor trustees. That worked. Then we tried to connect a bank account to the Vanguard account so we can transfer the funds and distribute the money to the heirs. The bank account is also a trust account with all the correct peoples names on it. That “appeared” to work, at least until we actually tried to transfer the money. Everything we did was at the direction of Vanguard and our estate attorney. Then they said we needed to do something else to resolve it. So, we do exactly what they said and they confirmed all would be good. Not so much. Now someone else is telling us that the person who started the process for us did it all wrong. We’re trying to get that resolved now, but who knows if the next thing they do will actually work and our confidence is low. They actually suggested that the simplest thing to do was for the trustee to create a personal Vanguard account and transfer all the money (7 figures) into that account, then distribute the money to the heirs. WTF?!? What that looks like to us is the one trustee inheriting all the money then “gifting” the money to all the heirs. Vanguard said that this would all be a non-taxable account, but given they can’t seem to find their butt with both hands, I don’t believe a word they say and it just looks wrong.
Apparently my parents are the first ones ever to die with an account at Vanguard. They are clueless.
Im actually surprised this was allowed. The Trustee and Successor Trustees should have been specified in the Trust documents. I don’t see why they allowed you to modify it after they passed. What happened to the original Trustee and who were the Beneficiaries ?
That is specified. It was quite easy to get access to the trust account as we just provided the trust docs that showed who the successor trustee. My parents were trustees of the trust. Once they passed, the successor was my sister who now is listed as such on that account.
I’m not surprised, and IMHO ignorance in dealing with estates and trusts is common everywhere. I would not follow their simple suggestion for the same reason you mention. Maybe the ability for a successor trustee to move money to a bank via online transaction has made things worse. Back in the day, you had to write a letter of instruction to tell Vanguard to send the fraction of the money in a check to each of the heirs. Nice paper trail.
If you haven’t already tried, I’d call Vanguard again, weekday daytime, and try to talk to a supervisor. Somebody knows how to fix the problem.
I’m sorry you lost your parents and have to deal with this sh’t.
When my dad passed, VG said for each heir to create their own VG account and the money was trasfered directly to each heir. From their, everyone could move their money if they wanted. It worked fine. But my dad didn’t have a trust account - -just his brokerage/IRA/Roth accounts. Good luck!
We contacted them last week and the agent at Vanguard, ironically part of the “advanced blah blah blah” group, is supposed to beworking to fix this. We’ll see what happens.
I kind of half expected something like this, but after the trouble we’ve had with VG just dealing with this I prefer not to pursue that. We just want to get access and send checks out to everyone. I’m the only one with a VG account so my four siblings would have to create accounts if we went that way. and one sibling likes to drag their feet just to cause problems for the rest of us.
Thanks!
OK, then I misunderstood some of your original post. It sounds like Vanguard is causing unnecessary administrative burden to distribute funds. Sorry you are going thru that at this time…
I helped settle my Dads estate and the brokerage had a dedicated Trust Settlement department that handled everything and was well versed in the documents.
Agreed Vanguard stinks mightily. My experience was with an account my late son left behind. He had taken it out upon my suggestion, passed along from you-know-who.
Once all was agreed and Independent Administrator declared, it was time to get the dough. I managed to get the bulk by setting up a like account at a decent institution. So far so good, but then some dregs came in, like a dividend or something.
I don’t remember how many calls over a few weeks, but it was like pulling teeth. I was ready to just write it off and never speak to Vanguard again, and then got a rep who handled it. And I will still never speak to them again it was that bad. About as bad as Fidelity, but that is another story.