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A Culture of Wealth Creation
In Trust Issues, you address the most common mistakes made in estate planning, sharing cautionary tales and offering sound advice on the basics from Grantors and Beneficiaries to charitable structures. Why was this an important book for you to write?
In working with clients and their families for nearly four decades, I have seen every one of the unfortunate stories in the book play out. When I saw that my own professional work had the potential to harm the families of my clients, it triggered a crisis of existential proportion. I wanted my life’s work to be positive and helpful. I went looking for examples of families that successfully grew wealth over multiple generations, and examined what they did differently from those who dissipate and destroy their wealth. I have worked to integrate that into what I do for my clients. I think it is important enough that I want others who may never become my client to turn the potential failure of their own estate planning into a multi-generational success.
One of your central arguments is that many families mistake document creation for legacy creation. Why do you think that misconception is so common?
First, because I have seen it. People think that having a binder full of paper means they have a “plan” and that the plan is going to be good for their family, but then they take no action beyond the paper. Any documents are better than no documents, and there are varying degrees of quality in the documents that attorneys produce. But even with the best of documents, if the family does not develop a culture of wealth creation and preservation, the consumption of the next generations will destroy the wealth.
You suggest that money without wisdom can become a burden rather than a blessing. What experiences led you to that conclusion?
All the examples in the book, although fictionalized, are based on real events I have witnessed.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from Trust Issues?
I like car metaphors. Driving a nice, well-made car is far better than driving a shabby one. Driving any car skillfully and safely is better than driving it recklessly. The best option is driving a top-of-the-line car with great skill. The same works for Trusts. A good one is better than a poor one. Using a Trust well is better than using it poorly. The best option is for a high-functioning family to use a well-structured trust.
Author Links: Website | Amazon
In Trust Issues, veteran estate planning attorney Rick Durfee pulls back the curtain on the legal tools and legacy strategies the affluent quietly use to safeguard their assets, slash taxes, and keep wealth in the family for generations, with control, clarity, and confidence.
This isn’t theory. It’s a field-tested playbook built from decades of helping high-net-worth individuals, business owners, and family offices create dynasty plans that actually work in the real world.
Whether you’re a successful entrepreneur, investor, or professional advisor, you’ll discover how to:
Use trusts to avoid probate and dictate how wealth is used, even long after you’re gone.
Set up business entities (like LLCs and FLPs) that shield assets from lawsuits and creditors.
Build a dynasty trust designed to preserve family wealth for 100+ years.
Legally minimize estate and gift taxes.
Sidestep the most common (and costly) estate planning mistakes.
Empower your children and grandchildren with wealth, without fueling entitlement or dependency.
Durfee’s approach is ethical, practical, and grounded in a simple belief: wealth should serve your family’s deepest values, not just their lifestyle.
If you’re serious about protecting what you’ve built, Trust Issues is your roadmap to a lasting legacy, on your terms.
Trust Issues: Why Traditional Estate Planning Has Failed Us and What To Do About It
In Trust Issues, Rick Durfee argues that traditional estate planning too often mistakes document creation for legacy creation, leaving families with Trusts that avoid neither conflict nor collapse. Through recurring cautionary stories, especially Bob and Sue’s painful descent from hopeful planning into litigation, taxes, entitlement, and generational erosion, Durfee reframes the Trust as something far more alive than a legal container. He moves from the basics of Grantors, Trustees, Beneficiaries, and funding into a broader philosophy of dynasty planning, family councils, Trust Protectors, Statements of Wishes, charitable structures, and the deliberate cultivation of human capital. The book’s central claim is simple but weighty: money without governance, meaning, and preparation can become an inheritance of harm.
What I found most compelling was Durfee’s refusal to let estate planning remain sterile. He writes about Trusts with the urgency of someone who has watched private hopes become public wreckage, and that gives the book its emotional force. The early image of the unfinished piece of furniture in his garage stayed with me because it quietly mirrors the book’s own concern with imperfection, usefulness, and the cost of leaving important work undone. I also appreciated the cake and bread analogy in the introduction, where the same ingredients produce different results depending on order and handling. That metaphor carries the whole argument beautifully. Durfee is at his best when he shows how a Trust can be technically present but functionally hollow, as in the account of assets left outside the Trust or heirs given purchasing power without wisdom. Those examples made the legal concepts feel painfully human.
Durfee isn’t merely asking readers to update paperwork; he’s asking them to examine what wealth is for, what family owes itself, and how much damage unearned abundance can do when it arrives without discipline. I admire that moral seriousness. The sections on family councils, Statements of Wishes, and loans rather than outright distributions felt especially thoughtful, because they treat descendants not as problems to be managed but as people to be formed, trusted, challenged, and protected. At the same time, the prose sometimes leans into alarm, particularly when it speaks of politicians, predators, entitlement, and social collapse. That intensity gives the book momentum. Still, even when I resisted some of the rhetoric, I respected the underlying insistence that estate planning has consequences of character, not just consequences of tax.
By the end, I felt that Trust Issues had made a persuasive case for replacing passive inheritance with intentional stewardship. It’s not a light read, and it’s not trying to be. It’s part legal primer, part family governance manifesto, and part warning bell rung by someone who believes too many families are sleepwalking toward preventable ruin. I’d recommend it to business owners, parents with substantial or complicated assets, advisors who work with multigenerational wealth, and thoughtful readers who already have a Trust but suspect that “having one” may not be the same as having a real plan. This is a strong, searching book for anyone who wants their legacy to bless the people they love rather than burden them.
Pages: 200 | ASIN : B0FJQSBJRL
