Practice Test Geeks(CES) Certified Estate and Trust Specialist Practice Test
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Ethics & Legal Compliance Flashcards

7 cards from real CES practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.

Read the first 7 Ethics & Legal Compliance flashcards as text

  1. Under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, when an estate planning attorney represents multiple family members, which risk must be managed?

    Answer: Conflicts of interest arising from differing client objectives

    Representing multiple family members creates potential conflicts of interest that must be identified, disclosed, and waived or avoided.

  2. A trustee knowingly delays making a required distribution to a beneficiary to preserve trust assets for personal convenience. This constitutes a breach of which duty?

    Answer: Duty of loyalty and impartiality

    Delaying distributions for the trustee's personal benefit violates the duty of loyalty, and treating beneficiaries unfairly violates impartiality.

  3. Which ethical obligation requires a CES practitioner to maintain competence in areas of estate and trust planning that evolve due to new legislation?

    Answer: Duty of competence

    Practitioners must keep current with changes in law to provide competent advice, a core professional obligation.

  4. A personal representative of an estate uses estate funds to pay a personal debt, intending to repay before the estate closes. This act is best described as:

    Answer: Commingling and breach of fiduciary duty

    Using estate funds for personal purposes—even with intent to repay—constitutes commingling and is a breach of fiduciary duty.

  5. When a CES professional discovers a material error in a prior estate plan recommendation that has not yet harmed the client, the ethical obligation is to:

    Answer: Disclose the error to the client and correct it promptly

    Timely disclosure of errors allows the client to make informed decisions and may mitigate harm before it occurs.

  6. Under state fiduciary law, which standard applies when evaluating whether a trustee's investment decisions were prudent?

    Answer: The process followed and decisions made at the time, not hindsight outcomes

    Prudence is judged by the process and information available at the time of the decision, not by subsequent results.

  7. A CES professional is asked by an executor to appraise estate assets at an artificially low value to reduce estate tax liability. This request is:

    Answer: A request to participate in tax fraud and must be refused

    Deliberately undervaluing assets for estate tax purposes constitutes fraud, and participating violates both law and ethics.