Non trustworthy trustee
Question: John's father-in-law died in September and left a trust to the wife, who has Alzheimer's disease. John's wife and her brother are the trustees. As it turns out, there may be money being pulled from the trust to help another brother who is unemployed. He's worried about that setting a bad precedent, and Dave almost blows his top here.
Dave Ramsey's advice: Dude, that's ILLEGAL! There's a thing called a fiduciary trust responsibility. These trustees have a responsibility to their mom, who is an Alzheimer's patient, and legally, if they do anything with that money that is not in her best interest, they have broken the law.
Your wife's going to get in a lot of trouble. One of your other siblings is going to turn around and call her out for not taking care of mom as the legally responsible trustee of this trust. It doesn't matter if they were about to die and needed a liver transplant; you cannot use this money for that! It doesn't matter whether the need is legitimate or not. You're going to get sued and end up owning all this money back.
Call the attorney advising you on the estate and see if he doesn't blow a fuse. If somebody else wants to help brother, that's fine; but not from the frickin' trust!
