Victor J. Schultz is President and Chief Fiduciary Officer of Prairie Trust, charged with overseeing trust services and related fiduciary issues, including personal trust and estate settlement. Victor joined Prairie in November of 2013, and now serves as President and Chief Fiduciary Officer of the entire wealth management division. Prairie Trust’s services focus on trust administration, with niche expertise in directed and delegated trusts, special needs trusts (including serving as trustee of the Life Navigators pooled trust), estate settlement, and serving as independent trustee in conflicted family matters.
Victor has been one of the leaders in modernizing and rewriting Wisconsin’s laws on trust, including the Wisconsin Trust Code, Wisconsin Principal and Income Act, and the Wisconsin Prudent Investor Act. He served as co-chair of the study groups that drafted and enacted the Wisconsin Trust Code in December of 2013 and the Trust Code trailer bill in March 2024. Victor is a frequent speaker and has spoken to and served on numerous committees and study groups. He is a leading advocate for the corporate trustee business in Wisconsin and serves as a director of the Wisconsin Bankers Association Trust Banking Section and WBA Government Relations Committee.
Victor also serves on the boards of the Ellinger Foundation, the Children’s Hospital Planned Giving Council, the Life Navigators Trust Committee, the Wispact Attorney Advisory Council, Waukesha County Community Foundation, and the Waukesha County Business Alliance. In 2020, Victor became the first fiduciary counsel in Wisconsin to be appointed as a fellow of The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), which recognizes those with exceptional skill in, and who have significantly contributed to the field of, trust and estate law.
He received his law degree from Marquette University Law School and his undergraduate degree in accounting from UW-Madison. Victor and his wife, Jayna, live in Brookfield, Wisconsin and they have three daughters, Stacey, Melissa, and Haylie.
Mark A. Shiller of Certus Legal Group, Ltd. concentrates his practice in the areas of estate planning and business succession planning and typically assists business owners, professionals, senior executives and other individuals, couples, and families who appreciate his thoughtful and creative approaches to their often complicated personal, tax, and financial planning challenges. Some of his deeper engagements also involve the identification and leveraging a family’s personal, financial, and moral capital to inform and direct multi-generational planning goals. Success in this effort is not just measured in taxes avoided, but in the support and mentoring of productive “Next Gens” and effective and efficient succession of ownership and management in family businesses.
Mark has been quoted in such publications as Smart Money, Worth, and Investment News, has served as a faculty member of the National Trust School of the American Bankers Association, and was an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. He frequently speaks on estate planning topics on a wide variety of subjects to groups of attorneys, accountants, and other financial professionals, as well as business groups and the general public. In 2024, he will release the book, How to Not Ruin Your Kids with Money, an outgrowth of his speaking and work on the topic. In addition, in part due to his 20-plus-year career as a professional improv comedian, Mark also provides training for organizations, including Fortune 100 organizations, on developing a collaborative culture, addressing intergenerational communication issues and other topics.