Fortunately, California law protects beneficiaries by requiring trustees to communicate throughout the trust administration process and act in the best interests of beneficiaries.
The Options for you to Hold the Trustee AccountableContact the Trustee. ... Write a Letter. ... Hire an inexpensive lawyer. ... Hire an expensive lawyer. ... Hire an attorney who can take court action.
A beneficiary can override a trustee using only legal means at their disposal and claiming a breach of fiduciary duty on the Trustee's part. If the Trustee stays transparent and lives up to the trust document, there is no reason to “override” the Trustee.
The trustee cannot grant legitimate and reasonable requests from one beneficiary in a timely manner and deny or delay granting legitimate and reasonable requests from another beneficiary simply because the trustee does not particularly care for that beneficiary. Invest trust assets in a conservative manner.
Trustee malfeasance refers to any type of negligent, self-serving, erroneous, or retaliatory conduct committed by the trustee of a trust resulting in harm to trust assets or beneficiaries. Trustee malfeasance is a broad term encompassing many different types of offenses, both intentional and unintentional.
Specifically, fiduciary duties may include the duties of care, confidentiality, loyalty, obedience, and accounting. 5.
Several states require you to send a notice to all trust beneficiaries within a certain time after you take over as successor trustee of the trust. Most states give you 30 or 60 days to send this initial notice.
If a beneficiary doesn't receive what they're entitled to from the estate, the executor or administrator may be liable to pay this themselves. To help protect against any possible claims, the executor or administrator needs to take all the necessary steps to find the beneficiary before distributing the estate.
In other words, the beneficiaries are the rightful owners of the assets and therefore have a right to them, but the trustees take care of the administration until, for example, a child turns 25. A beneficiary cannot dispose of the assets until he or she takes control of them.
Yes. A trustee has the powers of an absolute owner and can even postpone a sale. However, in order to sell any property there must be at least two trustees able to sign the contract for sale.
The trustee cannot do whatever they want. They must follow the trust document, and follow the California Probate Code. More than that, Trustees don't get the benefits of the Trust. The Trust assets will pass to the Trust beneficiaries eventually.
If the trust document is silent about removing a trustee or there is a disagreement between the other trustees and beneficiaries as to whether they should be removed, then either the other trustees or beneficiaries can to apply to court to have them removed.