Trustee Empowerment & Protection

Trustee Empowerment & Protection operates as a directed trustee, a specific fiduciary role under Michigan trust law. In a directed trust, the trustee administers the trust — including custody, recordkeeping, tax filings, and distribution processing — but does not control or manage the trust's investments. Instead, an external investment advisor, often the family's long-standing financial professional, directs the portfolio. This structure preserves the advisory relationship while installing an independent fiduciary to handle the administrative duties and the trustee-level liability.

Investment decisions are made by the external investment advisor named in the trust document, not by TEP. The grantor or beneficiaries designate that advisor, and TEP follows those instructions as the administrative trustee. This is the core premise of a directed trust — bifurcating the traditional corporate trustee role so that the family keeps its chosen wealth manager while a separate entity manages the fiduciary back-office duties.

No. TEP is a trust-administration firm, not a family office. It does not aggregate family capital for investment, source direct deals, or offer financial planning. It serves as the institutional trustee — the named fiduciary on the trust document — and handles the regulatory and administrative obligations that come with that role. Some single-family offices choose to use a directed trustee like TEP to fireproof their governance, keeping the SFO as the investment advisor and TEP as the independent administrative trustee.

No public fee schedule exists for TEP. In the directed-trustee universe, typical fee structures include an annual trustee fee calculated as a percentage of the trust corpus — often with a minimum floor and tiered downward as assets grow — or a flat retainer for trusts with predictable administrative complexity. Directed trustees generally charge less than full-service corporate trustees because they bear no investment-management responsibility and the associated compliance overhead.

As a trust company operating in Michigan, TEP is subject to state trust law, including Michigan's directed-trust statute, and likely to oversight by Michigan's Department of Insurance and Financial Services. Under a directed trust, TEP's fiduciary liability is carved to exclude investment outcomes — it is liable for prudent administration, accurate accounting, and adherence to the trust's terms, while the investment advisor carries the duty of care for portfolio decisions. This liability separation is precisely what makes the model attractive to families and their advisors.

No. TEP does not publicly publish a figure for assets under administration, assets under management, or number of trust relationships. The firm maintains no detectable website, LinkedIn page, or SEC/state registrant disclosure that would reveal its scale. The absence of public metrics is common among directed trustees that accept business exclusively through attorney and advisor referral rather than direct client acquisition.

Directed trustees are most commonly deployed when: (1) a family has a trusted financial advisor they do not want replaced by the corporate trustee's in-house advisors; (2) the trust holds complex assets like closely held business interests or real estate that are better managed by a named individual or entity; (3) the grantor wants to separate the control functions to avoid concentration of power; or (4) the trust is sitused in a state like Michigan where directed-trust statutes provide explicit statutory protection for the unbundled fiduciary roles.