Total-return investing
Certified Financial Planner glossary · Certified Financial Planner
Definition
A trust investment approach severing distributions from accounting income, resolving the impartiality conflict between income and remainder beneficiaries.
Total-return investing in plain English
An income beneficiary wants dividends and interest maximized while remainder heirs want growth, and the trustee is stuck in the middle. Total-return investing severs trust distributions from narrow accounting income and instead supports distributions from overall return, easing that impartiality conflict. Unit trusts and power-to-adjust statutes often operationalize the idea. The point is fairness across classes of beneficiaries, not a license to ignore the trust's distribution standard.
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