Is there a frontiers bank and trust?

How can we reduce fee's on my father's trust whereby my mother is a co-trustee along with a corporate bank?

• My father passed away in 2003 and left a trust for my sister and I as beneficiaries. My father made my mother co-trustee along with a corporate bank (small scale trust company). It is not held at a large national bank, but a smaller regional bank. The trust terms indicate that my sister and I receive principal distributions at 25, 30, and 35. We are also to receive quarterly income from the trust. I am 30 and my sister is 33. It makes us sad to see so many fees taken out. My mother has calculated over $90,000 in fees have been taken. At this point there is only $650,000 left in the trust. Do you think we could try to get my mother to be sole trustee? What else could we do to eliminate or reduce fees? Nothing ever gets done to the account. It literally sits there and there are no trades. I have talked to a few attorneys and they said we could approach the bank and request they remove themselves as trustee. I have no idea how likely they would be to say yes or no to that. Does anyone know?

• Answer:

  I would think that you could only get rid of them if they were drastically underperforming the appropriate benchmark by bad management (which you would have to prove). I would try and establish what benchmark they are using and how they are performing compared to that benchmark (and why they are underperforming if that is the case). Otherwise it will be very difficult to remove them.