The Prudent Investing of Trusts

This book seeks to provide historical grounding, analysis, and multiple examples of prudent investing of trusts. Specific topics covered in the materials include a description of the evolution of portfolio management, changes in the concept of loyalty, the utility of exculpatory clauses, the uniqueness of charitable trusts, ERISA standards, social investing, and the statutes promoting compliance with fiduciary responsibility. The Prudent Investing of Trusts offers a timely response to the Wall Street Crisis of 2008, the enactment of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and the federal legislation and the additional federal remedial measures that followed. This book, up to the date of publication, seeks to incorporate all of these challenges and government responses. But as the media preoccupies itself with falling stock prices and the dilemma of foreclosures, there are legal disputes being initiated or contemplated against trustees by private and charitable beneficiaries who have seen assets decrease significantly. This book describes the parameters of legal causes of action when settlors and beneficiaries currently contemplate legal action to rectify the harm that they are experiencing. It also describes and illustrates whether the trustee who manages these affected trusts prudently.

Raymond C. O'Brien is a professor of law at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America; he is also a permanent visiting professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Michael T. Flannery is an associate professor of law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law.