America’s Most Advisor-Friendly Trust Companies Showcase - Flipbook - Page 14
2026 ADVISOR-FRIENDLY TRUST COMPANIES
CLIENTS LOVE YOUR DYNASTIC INSIGHT
When advisors offer estate planning support, their clients tend to respond favorably.
Only 17% of the people SmartAsset polled say the estate plan is the “most
underutilized” part of the platform. Tax and retirement planning are less popular!
Other
Debt Management
3.60%
4.32%
Tax Planning
Educational
Savings Planning
35.25%
5.04%
Small Business
Planning
10.79%
Retirement
Planning
Estate Planning
23.74%
17.27%
Source: SmartAsset Financial Advisor Survey
WHERE DO THEY OPERATE?
One of the most powerful and least
understood tools available to high-networth families and their advisors is also
one of the simplest in concept: you do
not have to accept the trust laws of the
state where you live. Any person from
any state can establish a trust in any
jurisdiction, and the choice of where
to do so can have consequences that
compound over decades and across
generations. State trust laws differ
dramatically in the protections they offer,
the taxes they impose, the flexibility
they allow, and the length of time they
permit a trust to endure. Understanding
these differences is not optional for any
advisor who takes multigenerational
planning seriously.
THE COMPETITION AMONG
STATES IS REAL AND ONGOING
What has evolved over the past several
decades is essentially a market for trust
business, where states compete for
wealthy families by enacting increasingly
favorable legislation. Twenty-one
states now have domestic asset
protection trust statutes, representing
14
approximately 43% of the nation’s
geographic area and 25% of its
population, a figure that has grown
substantially as more states have
recognized the competitive advantage
of entering this market. That expansion
has not flattened the playing field. It
has made the differences between
leading and lagging jurisdictions more
consequential because families now
have more options while the top-tier
states have continued to improve.
The states that dominate this
competition share a recognizable set of
characteristics: no state income tax on
trust assets, perpetual or near-perpetual
trust duration, robust asset protection
statutes, strong privacy protections, and
flexible directed trust frameworks that
allow advisors to maintain investment
authority while a separate corporate
trustee handles administration. South
Dakota, Delaware, Nevada, Alaska, and
New Hampshire consistently occupy
the top tier, each with distinct strengths
and areas of emphasis.
SOUTH DAKOTA: THE
CONSISTENT LEADER
South Dakota has been recognized as
the leading dynasty trust jurisdiction
for more than a decade, a distinction
that remains unchanged in the most
recent 2025 Dynasty Trust Rankings.
Its dominance rests on a combination
of factors that no other state has
fully replicated. South Dakota offers
unlimited duration for dynasty trusts,
imposes no state income, estate, or
inheritance tax, maintains the strongest
domestic asset protection trust laws in
the country, and was the first state to
create a Discretionary Support Statute
that defines a beneficiary’s interest
as a non-property interest, making it
effectively unreachable by creditors.
