You are trustee of a Rs 6 crore trust for a minor. The guardian asks for Rs 40 lakh to buy a car; the deed allows spending on education, health and maintenance. Walk through what a fiduciary does with this request that day.

Test the request against the deed, decline the car as asked, offer to pay the child's school transport instead, record the reasons, and reply in writing. The trust can afford Rs 40 lakh, 6.7% of its assets, but affordability is not the test. A car chiefly serves the guardian; getting the child to school is maintenance. Funding transport at about Rs 1.8 lakh a year meets the child's need within the deed.

Much of it is exactly this: requests arrive, and each one is judged against a document someone else wrote. A fiduciaryA person who holds money or power on behalf of someone else and must act in that person's interest, not their own or a third party's. acts for the beneficiary, not for whoever is asking, and must be able to show why each decision was made. Think of a school principal handling a parent's request for an exception: the rulebook, not the parent's persuasiveness, decides, and the file records why. The rest of the day is investment reviews, tax filings, accounts and beneficiary meetings, all with the same discipline.

Run the affordability check anyway, because the interviewer will ask. The child's budget of Rs 20 lakh a year, rising 6% a year for 14 years and discounted at 7%, is worth about Rs 2.64 crore today, well inside Rs 6 crore. So the trust can afford the car, and that is precisely why affordability cannot be the test: a trustee who spends whatever the trust can bear empties it for purposes the settlor never allowed. Rs 40 lakh is two full years of the child's maintenance budget.

Decide on the child's need, not the asset requested. The need is transport to school and activities, which is maintenance; the Rs 40 lakh car would mainly be an asset in the guardian's hands, so the trustee declines it and offers to pay transport costs of about Rs 1.8 lakh a year directly. If the deed's wording is unclear, the trustee takes legal advice before deciding and says so. Then the record: a minute naming the clause, the facts, the options considered, any advice and the reasons. Finally a courteous written reply the same day, stating the decision, the reason and the offer, because an unanswered guardian becomes a dispute.

The limit worth naming: a trustee is not there to second-guess every family decision, and refusing everything is its own failure. The job is to find the part of the request the deed allows and fund that part promptly.