Checks and Balances and Other Steps May Affect Who You Name
Who you select to serve in each fiduciary or other capacity might be affected by other steps you might take. For example, you might trust your sister implicitly and know she is prudent and honorable. However, you also know she has no financial expertise, so you are hesitant to appoint her as a trustee. However, if you factor in her ability to hire a wealth adviser and perhaps the same wealth advisory firm you now work with, perhaps there is less of a concern naming her. You could name her to be a co-trustee with an institutional trustee who brings financial acumen with it. You could alternatively have the trust structured as a directed trust and name an investment trustee to handle investment matters. That way, your sister could address all the personal trust administration decisions you feel she would do a great job at but not have to be involved with investment decisions.
Another approach might be to add a person as a trust protector who can fire and replace a trustee or other appointed person. In that way, if someone takes inappropriate actions, they can be removed without the cost and time of a court proceeding. For example, you would like to name your father as a trustee as you feel he has the knowledge of the family and all the technical skills to serve in that capacity. You are concerned that, given his age, at some point, he may not be able to serve. So, you might provide that at some specified age, say 85, he ceases to serve. Alternatively, you might appoint a trust protector with the power to remove him when appropriate.
There is yet another different approach to providing guardrails on a person you name to a particular position. You might name not one but multiple people to serve. That may provide checks and balances against any one person, perhaps not fulfilling their role appropriately. For example, your trust will empower someone to add a new person as a beneficiary. That might be done for various reasons and in various contexts. But instead of giving one person alone the power to add a beneficiary, you appoint a committee of three people and provide that a majority vote of any two can add a person as a beneficiary to the trust. That multiple-person committee with a majority instead of a unanimous vote requirement might address your concerns.
The point is that there are many ways to structure the various positions you might need to appoint people to fulfill in your estate plan so that you can arrive at an approach that is both comfortable for you and protective of those you are concerned about. A more robust approach may offset or protect against concerns about naming a particular person. This way, you can name people with helpful abilities and backstop areas they may not excel at.
Understanding options so that your plan and documents can be tailored to your needs and circumstances can make your decisions easier and better.