MALCOLM BUTLER, JD
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Why You Shouldn’t Leave Family Property to Your Children
I’ve had numerous clients leave family homes—from beach houses to picturesque farms—to their children as part of their estate plans. However, despite the best of intentions, this decision isn’t always in the best interests of the heirs.
Why an Estate Plan Is the Best Gift You Can Give Your Grandchild
While awaiting the recent birth of my first granddaughter, I spent a lot of time thinking about the best possible gift I could give her. Ultimately, I decided that the ideal present for my grandchild was to give her parents–my daughter and her husband–a professionally drafted estate plan.
Strategic Ways to Optimize Financial Planning in 2021
As 2021 gets underway, there’s a palpable sense of optimism both domestically and internationally as we move forward with an expanded rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. We hope the New Year will bring an increased demand for travel, dining, and entertainment that will give the private sector a...
How to Keep Heirs From Being Spendthrifts
This article was originally published to subscribers of The Wall Street Journal, found HERE.
Managing Generational Wealth Through Dynasty Trusts
If you have significant wealth you’d like to preserve, protect and share with future generations, a dynasty trust might be a strategic estate planning option to consider. The dynasty trust is a type of irrevocable trust that’s designed with the long-term, multi-generational transfer of wealth in...
Why You Should Write a Letter to Your Executor–and What to Say in It
This article was originally published to subscribers of The Wall Street Journal, found HERE. I once had a client who half-jokingly told me he wanted to be buried with his iPhone in his hand so he could call me—the executor of his estate—from the afterlife to make his voice heard.
Malcolm Butler’s History of The Fiduciary Group: 2000 – 2020
It has been about two decades since my father, Lee Butler, wrote the history of the first 30 years of our firm. At the end of his story, he left it to me to write my own account of the firm’s history from that point forward. It has been a great run over the past 20 years and, even during these...
The Beginnings of The Fiduciary Group: 1970 – 2000
Lee Butler with his son Malcolm in the 1960s. The beginning of The Fiduciary Group dates back to the summer of 1969. I was the Vice President and manager of the trust department of a major Savannah bank. Banking was in turmoil in 1969, including my employer. Under the management at the time, the...
Public vs. Private Equity
At The Fiduciary Group, our investment universe primarily consists of publicly-traded equities (stocks) and fixed income securities (bonds). From time to time, we receive questions from clients about making investments in non-publicly traded companies. We typically refer to these types of...
Establish Trusts to Create Peace of Mind
I recently had an older client with a significant net worth who spent most of his life in good health, but experienced a severe mental decline in his final years. Unfortunately, he never set up a trust to protect his assets, so it became challenging to look out for his best interests using only a...