In this case, the Missouri Court of Appeals imposed a fiduciary duty on a trustprotector where neither statute nor the trust instrument established a fiduciary duty.
To circumvent this risk, these Americans would appoint a trustprotector to supervise the management of the trust by the foreign trustee, and, if necessary, remove that trustee.
This has several important implications, which include the increased costs resulting from this third-party interference and the ambiguous nature of trustprotector status and duties in American case law.
The Uniform Trust Code provides some guidance when it states that any individual providing direction to a trustee is fiduciary per se. (Footnote 4) Contrast this with Alaska and Arizona, whose statutes state that a trustprotector shall not be treated as a fiduciary unless the trust instrument provides for such treatment.