Amcore Bank - Amcore Wealth Management - Amcore Trust Unauthorized debits, breach of trust Rockford Illinois

My son had a Supplemental Needs Trust that was established in 1997 because of a vaccine injury he received as an infant. The trust named Amcore Investment Group as the guardian of the estate, with the parents as co-trustees.
Over the last 10 years, the trust has had five different portfolio managers, and was most recently moved to a group of managers within Amcore Trust to manage the account. Over the last 12 years, he has had an average return rate of 1%.
On September 14, I contacted Amcore to inquire about the status of the trust and was not able to obtain any information. The woman could not give me that name of our portfolio manager, and did not know who that was. She had no idea what the investments were, and could not tell me what the status was of the trust account. As a co trustee, I was very frustrated that we could not get any info, and questioned their ability to manage the assets. The next day I called again, and received sarcasm and unprofessionalism, with no answers to my questions. I decided at that point that it was in the best interest to transfer the trust immediately due to the lack of knowledge about the diversification of the trust, refusal to communicate regarding the assets, and the inability to answer basic questions to the co trustees on the account.

On September 16, 2008, 2 of the 3 trustees had provided Amcore written notification of our desire for them to resign effective October 1, 2008 and justified our reasons along with our intentions. We asked that they secure the funds and transfer them into an insured Money Market account where they would remain until the transfer could take place. In addition, we had informed Amcore that we were in the process of working with an attorney to prepare the petition to have the court approve the successor trustee and transfer the trust. We did not receive any written disputes or notification from Amcore that they had not intended to do as we had requested.
On September 23rd, we had informed Amcore that we had signed the proper documentation and appointed a new successor trustee.

On September 26, I received a phone message on my personal cell phone that was not meant for me, Amcore Bank inadvertently called my cell number and left a message for an attorney that Amcore was seeking to hire an attorney to facilitate the transfer and resignation of the **** Trust. Helloooooo!!! This just shows their level of competence!!

I called Amcore back and informed them that she had called the wrong number, and that we would not approve of payment for another attorneys existence, that this was already be handled by the attorney who drafted the trust. I also sent an email of the same.

Amcore ceased communications with me in regards to the transfer. They would not give me any information as to when they were going to close the account, and when the transfer would take place. We had made several calls to their operations department, and the status of the transfer was unknown.

On October 6, I called Amcore and they informed me that they did not close the account, and it would take time to close the account. But that they were working on it. It wasn't until October 16th that I was informed by their attorney that they would not close the account because they didn't feel it was a prudent investment decision. On October 17, 2008, I received a letter from Amcore Bank stating they were resigning effective October 17, 2008 even though the court date to approve the resignation was not until the 21st of October and the court did approve the resignation.
What are you doing Amcore???? Which day is it???
I asked them again to close the account, the market was down and the trust was losing alot of money. Thye told me it was imprudent to close the account, but it was prudent to leave it open with the lack of competence they had previously exhibited???


On October 28, 2008 the court approved a successor trustee and ordered Amcore to transfer without delay. It took Amcore almost 3 weeks, we had to demand and threaten to hold them in contempt of court. And when we got it, it was much less than what we thought because Amcore had paid themselves, paid their attorney, and made unauthorized disbursements when they had no authority to do so. Steal from a kid Amcore?

If you have investments or a trust with Amcore- move it. Obviously if they would steal from a kid after a 10 yaer relationship, they would take from anyone.

Teresa
Crystal Lake, Illinois
U.S.A.