A trust document tells your trustee what they are permitted to do. It almost never tells them what you meant. A grantor's guidance letter is where the second part goes.
Your trust will be read, years from now, by someone who never heard you explain it.
Picture the document a Waconia couple signed in their fifties. It gives the trustee discretion to distribute for a beneficiary's health, education, maintenance, and support. That is standard language and it is in most trusts written in Minnesota. Twelve years later, one of their sons asks the trustee for $60,000 to cover losses in a business his parents privately thought was a bad idea from the start. The document does not mention the business. It does not say whether propping up a struggling company counts as support. The trustee still has to answer, in writing, within a few weeks.
That question reaches my desk in one form or another, and whether it takes days or months to resolve usually comes down to one thing: whether the person who wrote the trust left anything behind explaining what they meant.
A grantor's guidance letter is how you get a vote in that conversation after you are gone. It is a short, non-binding letter you write to your trustee, sitting alongside the trust rather than inside it, explaining the family, the money, and what you were actually trying to do. Attorneys and trust departments also call it a letter of wishes or a letter of intent. The three names describe the same document.
What a grantor's guidance letter is, and what it is not
The letter is precatory, which is the legal word for expressing a wish rather than issuing a command. Your trustee is expected to read it and weigh it. Your trustee is not bound by it, and cannot be, because the moment it binds anyone it stops being a letter and starts being an amendment to your trust.
That limitation is the source of its usefulness. Because it binds no one, it can say things a trust document cannot afford to say. It can be candid about a marriage. It can be honest about which child is ready and which one is not. And because it is not recorded, not filed, and not part of the instrument, you can rewrite it on a Sunday afternoon without calling your attorney or paying to amend anything.
| The trust document | The guidance letter | |
|---|---|---|
| Force | Binding. The trustee must follow it. | Advisory. The trustee must consider it. |
| Who drafts it | Your estate planning attorney | You, in your own words |
| Changing it | Requires an amendment or restatement | Write a new one and date it |
| Who sees it | Beneficiaries generally have rights to it | You decide. Commonly the trustee only. |
| What it holds | Powers, standards, timing, and terms | Context, intent, family history, and reasoning |
What belongs in the letter
The useful ones are specific. A letter that says you want your children to be responsible with money gives the trustee nothing they did not already assume. Five categories carry real weight.
What the money is for
Name the purpose out loud. Education through a graduate degree. A first home. Keeping the lake place in the family and paying its taxes. A trustee reading a request for a down payment on a house in Chaska decides very differently depending on whether you wrote that housing was a priority or never mentioned it.
What you would not fund
This is the half people skip, and it is the half that protects the trustee. If you would not want the trust underwriting a business a beneficiary has already failed at twice, say so. If you would want it to, say that instead. Either way the trustee is executing your judgment rather than substituting their own.
Family dynamics the document had to stay silent about
Trust documents are careful for good reason. Letters do not have to be. A trustee who knows that two siblings have not spoken since a funeral, or that one beneficiary manages a health condition that affects their capacity to work, administers the trust better than one who learns it from a phone call.
Why the shares are uneven, if they are
Unequal treatment among children is one of the most common reasons families end up in court, and it is very often defensible. A daughter who took over the farm was paid in sweat for fifteen years. A son received help with a house in 2015 that his sister did not. Explaining that in your own voice, while you are here to explain it, is worth more than any clause your attorney can draft.
The business, if there is one
For a family business owner the letter is where you say who you believe should run it, what you would want done if that person leaves, and whether you would rather see the company sold than run badly. None of that is binding. All of it is evidence of intent that a trustee will take seriously.
Writing a trust, or holding one that names a trustee who may not be the right fit? The first conversation is free and commits you to nothing. Talk with a trust officer
What does not belong in it
Three things, and getting them wrong can create the exact problem the letter was meant to prevent.
Anything you need to be binding. If it must happen, it belongs in the trust document, drafted by your attorney. A guidance letter that contradicts the instrument does not win. It simply creates a written record of a conflict for a beneficiary's lawyer to find later.
Conditions you would not want read aloud. Assume, for planning purposes, that the letter may eventually be seen by a beneficiary or by a court, even if you intend it for the trustee alone. Write it candidly, and write it as something you would be willing to defend.
The estate plan's actual work. Distribution timing, trustee powers, tax provisions, and successor trustees all live in the document. A letter is not a place to fix a plan that does not do what you want. If you find yourself using it that way, the plan needs revisiting. Our post on setting up a trust in Minnesota walks through what belongs where.
The binding half: design the distributions on purpose
A guidance letter works best alongside a document that was designed rather than defaulted into. Families and their attorneys commonly consider a few structures, and these are illustrations of what is possible, not recommendations for any particular family.
Staged distributions tied to age. One frequently used pattern releases a quarter of the trust at age 30, half of what remains at 35, and the balance at 40. The reasoning is simply that a beneficiary who mishandles the first tranche still has two more chances, with a trustee alongside them in between.
Triggers tied to readiness rather than birthdays. For an operating business or a farm, control can be tied to a leadership milestone or structured as an earn-out, so authority arrives with demonstrated competence instead of with a calendar. This is the same logic that governs farm succession planning in Minnesota, where the asset cannot be split without destroying it, and it applies equally to a Minnesota business transition.
Carve-outs for specific moments. A down payment, a wedding, tuition, or capital to start a business can be permitted outside the regular schedule. These are the requests trustees receive most often, and a document that anticipates them spares everyone a judgment call.
Which of these fits, and whether any of them should, is a conversation for your attorney and your tax advisor. What a trust department can tell you is which structures are straightforward to administer and which ones generate friction ten years in.
Why this is landing on Minnesota families now
Cerulli Associates projects that $84.4 trillion will transfer through 2045, with roughly $53 trillion of it coming from Baby Boomer households and about $11.9 trillion going to charity. A more recent Cerulli estimate puts the figure near $124 trillion by 2048. It is the largest intergenerational handoff on record.
The Minnesota version of that number does not look like a brokerage statement. It looks like tillable acres in McLeod County, a closely held company in Eden Prairie, a rental duplex, a cabin held by three siblings, and a retirement account that passes by beneficiary designation rather than under the will. Those assets are hard to divide, easy to fight over, and heavily dependent on someone understanding what the person who owned them wanted. That is precisely the gap a guidance letter fills.
Say it out loud while you can
The letter is the written version. The conversation is the better one.
The conversation is easier while everyone can still be in the same room. It is the one part of this that does not keep.
Families who handle this well tend to schedule an actual meeting, often with their attorney and their trust officer in the room, and walk through what exists, who will administer it, and why the plan is shaped the way it is. It is an uncomfortable hour. It is considerably less uncomfortable than the alternative, which is a group of adult children learning all of it at once, from a document, in the worst week of their lives.
I made this argument in Where a corporate trustee fits
We do not draft documents and we do not give legal or tax advice. Your estate planning attorney writes the trust and your CPA knows your tax position. Our role is to be the person on the other end of the letter, years later, actually reading it and administering against it.
That is worth thinking about when you decide who to name. An individual trustee, usually a sibling or an adult child, is frequently a beneficiary as well, which puts them on both sides of every distribution request your letter discusses. I spent seventeen years in the trust and estate group at a Minneapolis law firm before I came to the bank, and the pattern I see most often is a family trustee who is trying hard to do the right thing with no record of what the right thing was. Our post on choosing a trustee in Minnesota covers the questions to ask before naming anyone, and our trust and wealth management team page lists the four officers who do this work, with direct phone numbers.
If a beneficiary has a disability, the letter matters even more, because distributions interact with means-tested benefits and the trustee has to weigh every request against that. That situation has its own rules, covered in our post on special needs trusts in Minnesota.
One practical note. A guidance letter helps nobody if it cannot be found. Give a copy to your trustee while you are living, tell your attorney it exists, and store it with the trust document rather than in a safe deposit box that may be sealed at exactly the wrong moment. Our Trust Department works out of two offices, the corporate office in Glencoe and the North Oaks office in the east metro, and officers travel across the footprint, so a conversation about any of this can happen at the branch you already use.
.jpg?width=1000&height=667&name=Corporate%20(08).jpg)
The corporate office in Glencoe. The Trust Department works from here and from the North Oaks office in the east metro.
Common questions about grantor's guidance letters
Is a grantor's guidance letter legally binding in Minnesota?
No. A grantor's guidance letter is precatory, meaning it expresses wishes rather than commands. The trust document controls, and where the two conflict the document wins. A trustee is expected to read the letter and take it into account when exercising discretion, and in practice a well written letter carries substantial weight. Anything you need to be enforceable belongs in the trust itself, drafted by your attorney.
What is the difference between a letter of wishes and a grantor's guidance letter?
Nothing substantive. Letter of wishes, grantor's guidance letter, letter of intent, statement of intent, and side letter all describe the same thing: a non-binding document from the person who created the trust to the trustee who will administer it. Different attorneys and different trust departments favor different names. What matters is the content and the fact that the trustee has it.
Can I change my guidance letter without amending my trust?
Yes, and that flexibility is one of the main reasons to use one. Because the letter sits outside the trust instrument, you can write a new one whenever circumstances change, without an amendment, a restatement, or legal fees. Date each version, and give the current one to your trustee so an outdated letter is not the only copy on file.
Where should I keep my grantor's guidance letter?
Store it with your trust document and give a copy to the trustee you have named while you are living. A safe deposit box is a poor choice, because access can be restricted at death until an authorized party is established, which is the moment the letter is most needed. If a corporate trustee is named, the trust department can hold a copy with the governing documents.
Should the letter explain why I am leaving my children different amounts?
In most cases, yes. Unequal distributions are among the most common triggers for trust disputes, and the explanation is usually reasonable: one child worked in the family business, another received help buying a house, a third has needs the others do not. Setting out the reasoning in your own words, while you are able to, gives the trustee context and gives the family an answer that comes from you rather than from a lawyer.
Keep reading
- How to choose a trustee in Minnesota, and the questions to ask before you name anyone
- Setting up a trust in Minnesota, from the first conversation with your attorney through funding it
- Trust and wealth management, what a corporate trustee actually does and who does it here
- Why Security, what independent and locally owned means in practice
- Locations, all 21 branches across 18 Minnesota communities
Start with a conversation, not a decision
Whether you are writing a trust for the first time, holding one you have not read in a decade, or trying to work out what to tell the person who will administer it, the first step is the same. Call the trust department and talk it through. There is no obligation and no charge for the conversation.
Talk with a trust officer See how our trust team works
Growing, together.
Products purchased through a trust relationship are not FDIC insured, are not bank guaranteed, may lose value, and involve investment risk, including possible loss of the principal amount invested. Past performance cannot guarantee future results. Our services do not constitute legal or tax advice; please consult your attorney or tax professional to determine how this information may apply to your own situation. Page last reviewed September 2026.
Topics:
