The main purpose of a PFTC is to serve as trustee of a family’s trusts. Some families without PFTC structures use directed trusts to act similarly to PFTCs, with both investment and distribution committees comprised of family members and family advisors. South Dakota Trust Company LLC serves as a directed administrative trustee.

Like PFTCs, directed trusts generally trifurcate the traditional corporate administrative trustee function: SDTC serves as the directed administrative corporate trustee in the directed trust situs (e.g. South Dakota) providing the required trust administrative functions; this administrative corporate trustee takes direction from an investment and/or distribution committee usually comprise of family members and family advisors in the family’s resident jurisdiction. As with the PFTC, many families prefer directed trusts because they typically have confidence in their own family and family advisors to make proper decisions as fiduciaries for both the trust investments and distributions. Additionally, families can obtain the guidance and oversight of SDTC as the directed administrative corporate trustee. To learn more, please visit Directedtrust.com.