Santa Barbara Fiduciary Launches Presidio Private to Help Families Prepare for the “What Ifs”

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – After more than 20 years helping executives and families navigate life and work across borders, Monica Tull knows how much planning goes into an international move. Visas. Taxes. Housing. Schools. Jobs. The logistics can seem endless.

But one question is easy to miss: If something goes wrong, who can step in and actually act for you?

That question is at the heart of Presidio Private, the Santa Barbara fiduciary practice Tull founded to help individuals and families manage the financial and personal matters that suddenly become urgent when illness, incapacity, or loss changes everything.

“People are usually pretty good at planning for the life they expect to have,” Tull said. “It’s the things we haven’t thought through that can leave families scrambling. I want to help people think about those situations before they happen, rather than trying to sort everything out in the middle of a crisis.”

Her work supporting families through crises, combined with her own experience of moving countries and navigating new systems, led Tull to develop Mobility Shield™, a service that helps internationally mobile individuals and families. Tull helps clients identify planning gaps, works with their legal, tax and financial advisors to coordinate protections across jurisdictions, and can serve as California trustee or agent under power of attorney when needed.

Tull also works with family members and friends who have agreed to serve as trustee, executor or agent and find the role more demanding than expected.

“So many of my calls come from people who agreed to take on one of these roles and then realize how much is involved,” Tull said. “I help people who want to stay in control but need support with the harder parts of the job.”

That support often includes fiduciary accounting and trust settlement work, such as preparing financial records, organizing transactions, and communicating clearly with beneficiaries and other stakeholders.

“Most people find incapacity and estate planning difficult to think about,” Tull said. “It’s easy to do once, breathe a sigh of relief and put it away. But life keeps changing. Relationships change, assets move, children grow up and sometimes people move across borders. Your plan needs to keep up.”

Tull brings a global professional services background to her fiduciary work. She was a Partner in People Advisory Services at Ernst & Young and a Managing Director at Accenture, advising executives, multinational clients and high-net-worth families on global tax and executive mobility.

Born in California and raised in Australia, Tull began her career in Melbourne before a three-month assignment in San Francisco turned into a decade in the Bay Area. She later lived and worked in India, Singapore, and London before returning to California in 2020. Five generations of her family have lived in the state, and she now considers Santa Barbara home.

Tull is a member of the Professional Fiduciary Association of California and serves on the Finance and Audit Committees of Lotusland in Montecito.

Presidio Private’s approach is summed up in its tagline: “A Plan, In Place (Just in Case).”

For more information, contact info@presidioprivate.com.

About Presidio Private

Presidio Private is a Santa Barbara fiduciary practice founded by Monica Tull, CLPF, CNG. The practice provides independent fiduciary, trustee and estate administration services, fiduciary accounting and support, and cross-border family protection planning for internationally mobile families.