Trust Officer

Job Description

The Trust Officer is responsible for supporting and facilitating the growth and ongoing success of Parallel Advisors. This position reports directly to the Trust Director. As a Trust Officer, you will serve as the primary fiduciary lead for a portfolio of complex trust and estate relationships. This role sits at the intersection of sophisticated estate planning, fiduciary governance, and high-touch client service.

You will bridge the gap between the legal structure of trusts and the day-to-day execution of fiduciary administration, ensuring that the intentions of grantors are carried out with precision while maintaining the firm’s gold-standard compliance, documentation, and service standards. The Trust Officer acts as the central coordinator among beneficiaries, attorneys, accountants, and investment advisors, ensuring that every trust relationship is administered prudently, transparently, and in accordance with applicable fiduciary law.

This position is a hybrid position (in-office 3x/ week) in our Beverly Hills, CA office or our San Francisco, CA office.

• Lead the onboarding and ongoing administration of diverse trust structures, including:
  Revocable and Irrevocable Trusts, post‑death administration accounts, Charitable Remainder Trusts (CRTs), Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), Dynasty and generation‑skipping trusts
• Interpreting trust instruments and amendments, ensuring adherence to fiduciary duties of loyalty, prudence, and impartiality
• Administering trusts in accordance with applicable state law and governing documents
• Overseeing trust account setup, asset transfers, and ongoing record‑keeping
• Ensuring documentation and fiduciary decision‑making processes meet regulatory standards
• When serving as trustee or co‑trustee following a settlor’s death, lead the administration process, including: gathering and valuing trust assets, coordinating with attorneys and CPAs on estate settlement matters, overseeing payment of debts, expenses, and taxes, managing real estate or closely held business interests, and supervising distributions to beneficiaries and funding of subtrusts

• Act as the primary fiduciary contact for high‑net‑worth families and beneficiaries, including interpreting trust provisions for beneficiaries and advisors, explaining distribution policies, managing beneficiary requests and expectations, maintaining neutrality among competing beneficiary interests navigating complex family dynamics with professionalism and discretion
• Evaluate beneficiary distribution requests and fiduciary decisions involving discretionary authority, including reviewing requests related to health, education, maintenance, and support (HEMS), preparing internal discretionary distribution memoranda, presenting recommendations to the Trust Committee, balancing current beneficiary needs with preservation of remainder interests, and ensuring all discretionary decisions are thoroughly documented and defensible
• Coordinate with investment professionals to ensure trust portfolios are managed prudently by monitoring portfolio allocations for compliance with the Uniform Prudent Investor Act (UPIA), coordinating liquidity needs for distributions or expenses, supervising management of illiquid assets such as real estate or private investments, and reviewing investment performance and risk exposure

• Partner with external tax and legal professionals to ensure accurate and compliant administration by coordinating trust income tax filings (Form 1041), reviewing beneficiary K-1 allocations, working with CPAs on estimated tax payments and tax elections,…