Letters of Wishes and Legacy Letters

What a Letter of Wishes Actually Is

A letter of wishes is a private, informal document written by the grantor—the person who creates and funds a trust—to provide guidance to the trustee on how to exercise discretionary powers. It is not a legal instrument. It is not filed with a court. It does not override the trust agreement, and a trustee is not legally bound to follow it. What it does is give the trustee a window into the creator's thinking: what they wanted for each beneficiary, what values they hoped to reinforce, and how they imagined the trust operating under circumstances no one could fully predict at drafting.

The term "legacy letter" or "ethical will" is often used for a related but subtly different document—one addressed to the heirs themselves rather than to the trustee. Ethical wills have roots in traditions spanning centuries and cultures, where elders passed on wisdom, values, and blessings in writing alongside material inheritance. Today, families sometimes consider these documents as a way to give an inheritance its human context: the beliefs, life experiences, and hard-won lessons that produced the wealth in the first place.

Why Specificity Helps—Especially Decades Later

Trust agreements are drafted in legal language designed to endure. They describe powers and standards in broad terms: a trustee may distribute principal for a beneficiary's "health, education, maintenance, and support" (the HEMS standard is a common example), or may have broad discretion to distribute for any purpose the trustee finds appropriate. What the legal language cannot convey is what the grantor envisioned when they wrote those words.

A letter of wishes fills that gap. Consider a hypothetical founder who sold her logistics company and placed the proceeds in a dynasty trust. She might write a letter explaining that she hopes education distributions will include vocational training, not just university tuition; that she wants a grandchild's entrepreneurial ambitions supported even if the business seems risky; and that she believes travel and cultural immersion are legitimate forms of education. Twenty years after her death, a trustee reading that letter has something concrete to act on—rather than guessing.

Specificity also protects the trustee. When a beneficiary challenges a discretionary decision, a clear letter of wishes documents that the trustee's reasoning was consistent with the grantor's expressed intent. It does not insulate the trustee from all challenges, but it demonstrates thoughtfulness and fidelity to purpose. Families evaluating how to choose a trustee sometimes find that professional trustees place significant weight on whether a well-written letter exists.

What Belongs in These Documents

Letters of wishes vary widely, but some content tends to be especially useful:

• Family context. Brief descriptions of each beneficiary's personality, relationship with money, and life circumstances as the grantor understood them—acknowledging that these will change over time.
• Guidance on the distribution standard. Concrete examples of what the grantor would and would not have considered appropriate distributions, without trying to make the letter legally binding.
• Values and priorities. Whether the grantor valued self-sufficiency, encouraged philanthropy, worried about concentrating wealth in one generation, or hoped the trust would support a particular family business or charitable mission.
• Governance preferences. Thoughts on co-trustees, advisers, or how the trustee should approach significant investment or distribution decisions—particularly relevant when a trust protector is involved.
• Updating instructions. A note that the letter was written at a specific point in time and should be read with that context, encouraging the trustee to consider how circumstances may have evolved.

A legacy letter addressed to heirs might include family history, the story of how wealth was created, lessons learned from failure, hopes for the next generation, and the grantor's beliefs about money, work, relationships, and responsibility. These documents can be powerful touchstones for conversations about inheritance—especially when heirs receive them after a death and have no other way to hear those words.

What Does Not Belong

Because these documents sit outside the legal structure, they invite a common mistake: trying to use them to accomplish what only a properly drafted legal document can do. A letter of wishes should not attempt to alter trust terms, override a trustee's fiduciary duty, or make binding conditions on distributions. If a grantor's wishes are strong enough to be requirements, an attorney can draft them into the trust itself—or into a separate side agreement where appropriate.

Letters of wishes should also avoid language so specific and rigid that a trustee feels trapped rather than guided. A trustee who cannot use judgment will eventually face a situation the letter never anticipated. The goal is orientation, not a script.

Similarly, these letters are not the right place for personal grievances, punitive conditions, or instructions that could embarrass the family if the document became known. While letters of wishes are generally private, they can surface in litigation or family disputes, and they should be written with that possibility in mind.

Practical Considerations

A letter of wishes is typically not a one-time document. Families sometimes consider revisiting the letter whenever the formal estate plan is reviewed—after major life events, changes in family composition, or significant shifts in values or financial circumstances. The letter should be dated clearly, and prior versions archived rather than destroyed, so a future trustee understands the evolution of the grantor's thinking.

The letter should be stored with the trust document and shared with the trustee directly—ideally with a conversation, not just a handoff of paper. Some grantors also share relevant portions with beneficiaries during their lifetime, which can prevent misunderstanding and support the kind of family constitution process that larger families often undertake to document shared values and governance expectations.

A letter of wishes does not make a trust more flexible—the legal document does that. What the letter does is make a flexible trust more human.

For families navigating complex structures—multiple trusts, multiple generations, international beneficiaries—these informal documents become even more valuable because professional trustees managing many relationships may have little personal knowledge of any individual family. A well-written letter can substitute for years of relationship history.

Not a Replacement for Legal Counsel

No letter of wishes substitutes for qualified legal and tax advice. The formal trust document must be drafted by a licensed estate planning attorney who understands the family's full situation. The letter supplements that structure; it does not replace any part of it. A qualified attorney, CPA, or other licensed professional must evaluate any particular family's circumstances before any estate planning document—binding or non-binding—is finalized.

Readers exploring the broader estate planning landscape may find it useful to review the Estate Planning overview and the discussion of wills and revocable trusts before considering where a letter of wishes fits in their own planning process.