The Finance Committee of the AFT Board of Trustees provides oversight, and the Board votes on approval of the Alabama Family Trust Investment Policy.
Alabama Family Trust works with Waverly Advisors, LLC to provide professional money management and investment services. All beneficiary trust funds are held in individual accounts in custody of American Trust Custody.
ATC’s technology platform, Transaction Network Services, is a full function custody system that tracks individual account balances on a daily basis. Soon after the end of each month, the returns are posted in the Documents area under Investment Information.
Investment Objective and Risk Tolerance Questionnaire
Investment options with varying levels of risk are offered. To assist the Representative in selecting the option best suited for the Life Beneficiary, a risk tolerance questionnaire is provided in the trust setup documents. As indicated on the questionnaire, neither Waverly Advisors, LLC nor Alabama Family Trust assume any liability for investment decisions made by Representatives based on the results of this tool.
Investment Options Agreement
The Investment Options Agreement is where the investment choice is formally indicated during the trust setup process. As previously mentioned, various model portfolios are offered and the Representative can decide whether to allow future changes to the investment option chosen.
Investment Fees
A quarterly investment administrative fee of 0.4% is charged, but only to the extent of income earned that quarter (i.e. not charged to principal). Please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions page for more information. A full Schedule of Trustee Fees and Costs is also available in the Documents section.
Investments and Taxes
The earnings of the trust for each beneficiary are taxable. As trustee for first-party (Grantor) and third-party (Complex) trusts, Alabama Family Trust prepares a Federal Form 1041 and Alabama Form 41 under an EIN that is assigned to each trust. It is the administrative policy of Alabama Family Trust to prepare and file these tax returns for any year that a trust is in existence.
AFT also supplies to each Representative summary federal and Alabama tax documents of trust earnings. Please keep in mind that Alabama Family Trust works under the same tax filing deadlines that apply to the Beneficiary as an individual filer. An amended filing for a Beneficiary may result if individual income tax returns are filed before receiving the tax documents from Alabama Family Trust. As with past practices, AFT is generally able to provide the tax documents to the Representative before April 1st of each year.