The Art of Communication

Northern New Mexico has a well-earned reputation as a home to many artists and creative people. We’ve always taken special pride in serving this community and their specific needs. We know, first hand, that managing wealth for artists and art collectors often entails a certain creativity in itself!

In such cases, communication plays a critical key and often involves partnerships and dialogue with museums, non-profits, art galleries and extended family.

Recently, Heritage Trust was appointed as Special Administrator to manage a divorce in which an ex-husband’s artwork was to be split 50/50; this particular situation demonstrates well how we manage these complicated situations.

Since much of the artwork slated to be divided equally was on display in galleries, Heritage Trust implemented a strategy to manage the process of both receiving and distributing proceeds as artwork was sold. Pretty basic right? Well, to execute that simple goal, we needed to employ quite a bit of communication, flexibility and yes, even creativity.
 

  • Communication with the ex-husband, who lived out of country
  • Communication with the ex-wife, often traveling to far-flung locales
  • Communication with galleries and curators, both in-state and out
  • Communication to resolve business discrepancies in sales and inventory records
  • Communication to keep all parties informed of sales and distributions
  • Communication to manage the emotions of the very real and wonderful people involved
  • Communication to divide and deliver the remaining unsold artwork
     

The court allowed a period of four years for the artwork to be divided between the two parties, either by sales or by distribution of individual pieces. To the great relief of both former partners, Heritage Trust was able to successfully close the job before the four years had run out.

As is often the case with divorces, this was an emotional and sensitive situation and our role—to communicate both warmly and fairly—helped secure a positive resolution for both parties.

We are proud to have served these individuals so well as they worked to amicably un-couple their lives and we’re grateful to have received their high compliments and subsequent referrals.