I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
Your answers would be found in the trust document. READ IT! What you
say doesn't make sense. If your wife is the trustee, she should be
able to appoint or hire whoever she wants to manage the investments.

If your wife is the trustee and you change the trustee, your wife
would no longer be the trustee. You say two things, you say your wife
is the trustee, then you say you want your wife to change the trustee
from the bank to someone else. Doesn't make sense. Does the trust
document grant your wife the power to appoint a successor trustee or
something? Again, read the trust document.

If your wife is indeed the trustee, and she no longer wants to be, she
can resign. If she has already resigned and the bank is trustee, then,
well the bank is the trustee now. There can only be ONE trustee. At
least I've never seen a trust with more than one trustee. I suppose
you could have a trustee by committee or something. But I digress....

There should be a paragraph in the trust document that says how to
replace the trustee, sometimes by a vote of the majority of
beneficiaries. In practice, the beneficiaries go to the trustee and
ask the trustee to resign. This is the smoothest way. If the trustee
wont resign, then you need a lawyer. Good luck finding an estate
lawyer that wants to go up against a bank. Usually the local bank
hires all the estate lawyers for some work, so they are in their
pockets. May have to find a lawyer that doesn't have any business with
banks or trusts, like a labor lawyer. They usually hate banks, trouble
is they hate trusts too. Sometimes you have to go to court and get the
judge to do something. Bad publicity, one purpose of trusts is
privacy. But generally, if the beneficiaries raise enough ruckuss,
they can get who they want to be the trustee. But they have to be
persistent. If the beneficiary is a minor then you have another set of
problems. The guardian has to act in her behalf.

Bottom line, the trustee should be working in the best interest of the
beneficiaries. If they aren't, or if their fees are higher than they
should be, the beneficiaries should be able to change the trustee. The
best way to change the trustee is to get them to resign. If you do get
them to resign, you have to find someone else who is better.

If it is just the investments aren't good, maybe you could persuade
the bank to change their investments to ones that you think would do
better. Ask the bank to provide you with a 1 year, 3 year, 5 year and
10 year investment return of the funds they are managing. Meet with
them and go from there. If the problem is their fees are too high,
meet with them and request that they lower their fees. Fees for
"corporate trustee services" for assets below $1 million are usually
1% a year, and above that it is usually about 1/2% a year, but they do
vary quite a bit, and there are some discount places. If you hire a
trustee with a lot of overhead you are going to pay more etc. It is
like anything else, prices vary.

As to altering the trust document, if you truly made it irrevocable,
then you usually cant alter it, but it can be altered by court order
(a judge). But sometimes there are provisions in the trust document to
alter it, if the grantor is still alive, which is obviously your case.
Again, read the trust document, then apply common sense. (If the trust
document can be altered then it is arguable whether the trust is truly
irrevocable, but that is a side issue).

Personally I think trusts are fancinating. If you want to contact me,
I am at
anothername[at]comcast.net

Legal disclaimer and Good luck!

arouth[at]radiology.umsmed.edu (zxcvar) wrote in message news:<f0e5a6c.0402141820.10eeb4cd[at]posting.google.com> ...
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investments not the bank's.

If she is not thed trustee and only a co-trustee or merely a guardian of your
child, she should demand an accounting from the trust department and if they
are not incompliance insist they come into compliance or take them to court.

Sounds like both you and she are in dire need of a good Attorney.

Greetings! I have made an irrevocable trust for my daughter with my
wife as a trustee. Can my wife change the trustee without altering the
condition of the will if the trustee does not follow the terms of the
will regarding investment of the money in the trust? [The local bank
used to be the trustee. But it is taken over by a big group. We are
hearing that the new trust department is not following the
instructions of the trusts.] What do you think? With thanks in
advance.