Legacy, Love, and Trust: A Conversation with Sara Ecklein, Private Fiduciary & Founder of Trust and Honor
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Show Notes:
In this episode, Sara Ecklein is interviewed by Adam Torres about the concept of fiduciary duties. They discuss various aspects and implications of fiduciary responsibilities in different professional contexts.
About Sara Ecklein
Sara Ecklein’s calling to become a fiduciary, and to found Trust & Honor, was informed by personal experience with loss and end-of-life care. After witnessing a loved one’s final three days of life, Sara connected to her personal mission to provide healing and a sense of calm to people during their end of life transition. Sara has been working in the private professional fiduciary profession since 2014 and has a rich and varied background in issues facing senior and disabled populations, including end-of-life care, financial abuse, and navigating challenging support systems and family dynamics.
About Trust & Honor
At Trust & Honor, they bring a personal commitment and connection to our services that is unique in their field and distinct from the term “fiduciary” may call to mind. They focus on building personal, long-term relationships with their clients and offer a full spectrum of fiduciary services to meet their unique and changing needs over time. Their extensive expertise and heart-centered approach allow them to manage even the most complex cases with care and consideration.
About Legacy of Love Podcast
The Legacy of Love podcast aims to transform the narrative around estate planning. Instead of approaching it with fear or a sense of obligation, the podcast invites listeners to explore it from a place of inspiration and vision. It seeks to redefine what it means to plan for the future by focusing on the legacy one wishes to leave behind.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters com and click on be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so today’s guest is Sarah Eckline and she’s a private fiduciary and founder of Trust and Honor, and she’s also, I’m happy to say love
Adam. So I love having fellow podcasters on the line. I’ll tell you right now. So I definitely wanna get into your show. And of course we’re gonna talk about trust and honor, but I guess just to get us kicked off here how, how did you get started going down this path of becoming a private fiduciary?
Like where did all that become from you? And maybe actually it probably makes some sense to, yeah, yeah, no, great question. And, and it’s definitely a story, but I’ll try to be distinct. No, give, give us the real Go for it. Yeah. End of life care is really kind of where, this my journey began. at least with my, the professional work. I was with a loved one during her final three days of life, and it just had this profound effect on me of just.
Leaning in and being witness to her dying. And also just the present moment. I think that’s one of the gifts of death is I call it like the ultimate truth serum. You know, all the kind of busyness the things that we think are important that really aren’t melt away. And honestly, what I was left with was this unconditional loving presence.
Wow. So that’s really kind of where things kicked off for me. And, and I thought originally I would be a hospice nurse and started going back to school and realized that that wasn’t quite the right fit. And eventually, I, wound up working for. Professional, fiduciary, and I’ll get to defining that, what that is in a minute.
Mm-hmm. But really the rest is history. I, I describe it as like a head and heart alignment and I just felt so much I. As being of service, I, I always had this kind of idea before I found this work, like, oh, maybe I needed to do AmeriCorps and go overseas and, you know, wanted to save, you know, the world.
And I realized like, really in my local community, in my backyard. A lot of people need a lot of, not only support, but kind of going back to that unconditional loving presence. So I find that in the work today you know, there’s a lot of moving parts to it. There’s, it’s, it’s always interesting and you’re always learning something, but I find the hardest part of the work, it’s really kind of that emotional, relational piece of building trust and supporting people during kind of life’s most difficult times.
So if it, okay now, I’ll kind of define private fiduciary. In the, in the, yeah. Let’s, I’m based, yeah, let’s do that for sure. Glen ahead. Yeah. I’m based in California, so we have this small profession and, and it’s actually a, there’s a license for it but it is an umbrella term, so I.
Someone’s guardian or conservator. I can act as a trustee. I can act as an executor, and I can also act as someone’s agent for both finance and healthcare. So that’s where, depending on the specific client’s needs, sometimes I’m just wearing the hat of a trustee and really just holding kind of the purse strings and paying the bills.
Or, you know, I’m, doing more times than not, kind of all of it where it’s both the, the healthcare decision making and also you know, the, trust and financial aspect. So that’s, the work that I do to kind of sum it up, I, say at the end of the day, whether. my client is alive, or I’m administering their trust or estate after death.
I’m the one that’s really entrusted to carry out my client’s final wishes. Hmm. So, going back to kind of like a mission and purpose, I mean, there’s so much responsibility and trust in this work, and I don’t take that lightly. Yeah. What and thank you for sharing that. And I think it, it definitely does take a special person to be able to want to work with someone as they’re like hospice, like you mentioned before for those workers I know, and then yourself.
I didn’t, I wasn’t. I knew a little bit about this, but I wasn’t aware of scope of what it could look like. And one of the words I, do wanna bring up is that, concept of like, of a trustee and what that means, but also like the pitfall of what it looks like during that time of, someone’s life, especially if, if that’s topic.
Well, I mean, that is like such a big topic, and that’s what I get really lit up about because I primarily work with clients privately. And so what that means for listeners is with this work, some work, some of this work is always under court supervision. So what that means is. Conservatorships and guardianships administering someone’s estate.
So you’re, you know, wearing the hat of an executor or administrator that’s always gonna be going through the courts and you’re getting your authority and appointed by the courts. I don’t specialize in that work. And that’s where privately people will, you know, work with their estate planning attorney, interview multiple professionals, and.
Name me in their estate planning documents. Mm-hmm. And I find things go much better when we’re building that relationship long before services are needed, where there isn’t like a health crisis or someone’s just passed away. We can, again, spend that time building that relationship and, honestly, me as a professional, getting onboarded.
To my clients’ unique wishes, needs, and, and also who they are as a person. Mm-hmm. So, working with people in the planning phase is, one of my favorite things to do. And after doing this, you know, for over a decade, I’ve administered over hundreds of trusts and estates over my career and. I would say that, kind of going back to those two camps, I’m either working with the families that are steps ahead of most where they plan.
Typically these are people that are highly educated, high net worth individuals where they have a whole team in place. And then I also work with the people that, you know, maybe don’t plan, and then that’s when, you know, I’m getting appointed by the courts. Really kind of, where, and this is gonna kind of lead into why I decided to launch my podcast, the legacy of love is because I realized, yes, you know, serving clients one-on-one, there’s so much reward.
But I could also make a huge impact of bringing this wisdom to kind of the collective to a larger mass of people and meeting people upstream. Just letting them know, trust me, you’re gonna leave an absolute mess if you’re not spending the time and cultivating kind of this intention and this love to set up your life and not only your life, you know, kind of that next generation, whether you’re leaving your money to, your loved ones, your family, or if it’s going to charity regardless, it’s really a night.
I wanna go a step further into the podcast because I love supporting other shows and other podcasters as well. what kind of content, like give us a feeling for like the content and the format and you know what, I want my listeners to go check it out. Like what my listeners can expect when they, when they visit your show.
Yeah. So, so far I’ve, I’ve been podcasting for about a year. I did launch the end of October, 2024. So there’s a good amount of effort. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you. How do you feel? Yeah, it’s been, you know, a total wild bread. I love it. I mean, you, before you start any kind of passion project, you never know where it.
You know, the, for my listeners, the audience and I’m definitely kind of going through the next transition, but so far I’ve been, they’re all conversations, so I bring on guest experts and it, I’m always bringing on someone that. Has a similar approach to me, which I would say I’m, I really lead with my heart and my warmth and, and the love for this work.
Mm-hmm. So we have all different types of professionals from estate planning attorneys to financial advisors. I’ve brought in a lot of money coaches as well to talk about our relationship and mindset and psychology with money. Also a lot of. Experts that support like elders, seniors as they’re aging, in place care placement coordinators.
So it’s kind of pulling this thread where there’s so many pieces that I find that, that are required for us to lean into and look at in order to. Comprehensively plan this, this legacy that we want to, not only leave, but also live. So we’re not gonna do that by just approaching this work of, let’s check it off the box of things to do, shove these documents in the drawer and never think about it again.
It requires us. To be willing to face our own mortality, to have the difficult conversations with our loved ones and our spouse. And so all of this, I really think we’re, I see that the estate plan is really kind of the starting line and then after that, there’s so much more that we can continue to cultivate in our own lives.
That kind of positive ripple for, for the collective, for the world and future generations. So that’s where I believe that work really have transform the world. So this may seem like a little bit of an unfair question, but it’s really not. Okay. Favorite episode so far. It really is, but I’m saying it’s not.
Sorry, I do this to every podcaster that comes in my show, by the way. Oh, no. What favorite episode? It’s like asking me to choose. That’s the worst question ever. I.
Yeah. I mean, it’s hard. it’s definitely hard to choose, but also, I know it’s not a fair question. Go for it. Right. I know, I know, I know. I teed it up that way. Go ahead. Yeah, the first one that came to mind I brought this woman on, her name’s Yvonne Caputo, and she wrote two books about her relationship with her father and.
The first book is called Swine with Dad, and the second one is called Dying with Dad. And that conversation just, it really began to kind of connect the dots of, kind of go in when you start a podcast where you have this like, I think thesis or idea and she, her personal story and journey of her relationship, the power.
That we each individually have to transform and change and basically it’s a story of a woman that, that really didn’t have a close relationship with her father and something changed within her where as he was aging, she began to ask him questions. and their relationship changed. He began to open up and told her the whole story of him in World War ii, and then through that they built this kind of closer bond and she helped him set up his estate planning documents and she ultimately was his healthcare decision maker and supported him as he aged and declined and, and eventually passed away.
And I felt like her personal story just touched upon so much of what I really know to be true. that again, going back to where we started, when we’re that unconditional loving presence that really has the power to transform our own life, but also our own relationship and that whole ripple that it can have.
Whether it’s just within the family, but then, for us as, as a collective, this is how we’re approaching our life, our relationships it has such a positive impact. I think most of us know the stories where you hear families are torn apart, battling things out of the court, fighting over money, or where mom needs to live, and I really think that a lot of that could be avoided if we’re.
Proactively and also having these conversations, not just once, but again, continuing to, because at the end of the day these are evolve and change as we, as our lives change and evolve. Yeah, that’s a great story. And I love when somebody has a, show and they’re tied into, their work and their doing.
Someone that just launches a show. But when you have something behind it, like what you’re talking about, I think it’s just meaningful people that listen and can in they’re you, the ability to affect, and especially people as they get near and mirror to work, right? Whether it’s for themselves or for a family member.
It’s meaningful. Speaking of that how do you, like, there’ll be some people that listen to this and they’ll, and they’ll wonder, you know, is this right? Is your service working with you? Right. For me and my family? Like, how does somebody know? So this might be a new concept for some. Yeah, well, I would say it’s really gonna be state specific.
So if, your listener is like, kind of interested in the state of. Trust and Honor Co is my website. There’s a lot of also information available kind of about the different roles that, that I talked about, the different hats that I can wear and, and serve clients. There’s also, it’s called the it’s the National Guardianship Association.
It’s guardianship.org and you can search for a professional in your local state. So that’s where this work. It, it’s basically dictated by probate law and that’s, again, gonna be state specific. So finding someone that’s in your local state I do recommend that. Most people don’t know about people like me.
This profession. So usually it’s estate planning attorneys that are making that referral. So that’s again where, you know, in my opinion, our estate plan, we should not be DI ying it. You should be really partnering with an estate planning attorney in your local state, and, you know, based on, that person’s individual needs, what their family system and support level looks like.
Typically the estate planning attorney can make that referral of what would be most appropriate.
Perfect. Sarah this has been a lot fun having you on the show today. For somebody does follow and wanna follow your work and also of follow your show, how do they do that? Yeah, so trust and is my website. And then I also have a free workbook that, listeners can download if this work resonates.
And that’s gonna be trust and honor.co/workbook. And it’s really to just get intentional about about this work. So getting clear on what our values, our wishes, what do we wanna leave behind? Really thinking about our legacy, not just what we leave, but how we live. So that’s a free resource.
And then Yes, the Legacy of Love podcast. It’s on all, you know, apple, Spotify, whatever platform you’re downloading. Soon I will be starting a YouTube channel and adding video. So stay tuned. That’s, that’s gonna be rolling out in the next two months, which is pretty exciting. Oh, that is exciting. And for the audience, just so you know, we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes so you can follow up and connect , with Sarah. And, speaking of connecting, if you haven’t followed or subscribed yet, definitely do that. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and. Adam, thanks so much. This has been a lot of fun.