The Boston Trustee

The Boston Trustee provides both the background and the history of a unique Boston institution: the men and women who serve as individual professional trustees, who control billions of dollars of assets, who have provided advice and counsel for generations of families, and who are universally known as ‘Boston Trustees.’ This quiet and discrete legal service had its roots in the early nineteenth century, when Boston’s closely interconnected social and cultural élite faced the problem of how to pass on massive new wealth in a predictable, safe, and prudent way. Today, the practice remains alive and well, a major, and very profitable, component of almost every Boston law firm, bank and trust office._x000D_
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In this thorough and surprisingly readable account of how the profession evolved as a uniquely Bostonian institution, the authors guide the reader through case law and the economic and social history that defined and refined the practice. Much of Boston’s wealth was channeled through the quietly effective counselo