Frankly, the party who should resist being named the trustee is the ex-spouse. Generally, a parent may not use the child's trust funds to meet the parent's legal obligation to support the child. See, for example, Cohen v. Cohen, 258 N.J. Super. 24 (App. Div. 1992) , cert denied 130 N.J. 596. So if things sour between dad and child, dad may be barred from using the funds.
To avoid any problems, the trustee should be someone who has no legal obligation to support the child. The trustee of mom's insurance policy should be someone "friendly" to dad. Likewise, the trustee of dad's policy should be someone "friendly" to mom. For example, when mom is gone, dad will want to use the life insurance to help support the child. Dad should not have to deal with former in-laws to have trust funds released. I am not a trust and estates lawyer, but I suppose you could also solve the problem by creating the actual trust document that details everything that mom would have paid if she had survived and authorizing the trustee to use the funds for those purposes, but that doesn't resolve mom's desire to avoid naming the ex as the trustee. ( but how do you predict the future expenses mom would have paid without bringing the estate into postjudgment litigation? Seems a lot easier to just name someone without the legal duty to support as trustee) Under all circumstances, the terms of the trust must be defined. An MSA that says Mr. Smith is the trustee of mom's life insurance policy is meaningless without defining the terms of the trust. I suggest a consult with a trust and estates attorney.
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You might try suggesting that neither party be a named trustee
This will give the court the opportunity to have an objectively fair result
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