A successor trustee has to collect the assets, pay the debts and taxes, keep the beneficiaries informed, and distribute according to the document. Every one of those is a legal duty, not a courtesy.
The standard is not what a grieving family member could manage. It is what a prudent person handling someone else's money would do, and courts apply it that way.
Loyalty means you act for the beneficiaries, not yourself. Impartiality means you do not favor one beneficiary over another, including favoring yourself when you are one of them. The duty to account means you can show where every dollar went. Add the duty to keep trust property separate from your own, which is where most trouble starts.
None of that requires legal training. It requires discipline about records and a willingness to say no to your own family.
The practical task list
- Accept the trusteeship and obtain a certification of trust to prove authority to banks and title companies
- Serve the 16061.7 notice on beneficiaries and heirs
- Get a tax identification number for the trust and open an account in the trust's name
- Inventory the assets and obtain date-of-death valuations, especially for real property
- Pay valid debts, final expenses, and taxes, and file the decedent's final income tax return
- Account to the beneficiaries, then distribute and obtain receipts
Date-of-death appraisals are not optional in practice
Nobody makes you get one. Then the house sells three years later and the beneficiaries need a basis figure, and a retroactive appraisal is worth less and costs more. Get the appraisal within a few months of the death and put it in the file. It is a few hundred dollars that can save five figures in tax.
Communication is a duty too
Beneficiaries are entitled to information about the administration on reasonable request. Silence is what generates litigation. In case after case, the underlying facts were fine and the lawsuit happened because a trustee stopped answering emails for five months and a sibling assumed the worst.
Send a short written update every six to eight weeks even when nothing has happened. Especially when nothing has happened.
“I tell trustees to imagine every email being read aloud by a lawyer to a judge. It is a cynical exercise and it improves the writing enormously. It also stops people from sending the message they will regret about their brother.”
Delia Vasquez-HartA trustee is entitled to reasonable compensation unless the trust says otherwise. Reasonable is fact-specific and depends on the work, the size of the trust, and what the trustee actually did. Keep contemporaneous time records if you intend to take a fee, because reconstructing them later looks like what it is. Our office bills administration flat or hourly depending on complexity, and we tell you which at the first meeting.
Questions we get asked
Can I hire professionals and charge the trust?
Yes. Delegating to an attorney, an accountant, or an appraiser is ordinarily appropriate and their reasonable fees are trust expenses. You still have to supervise them.
What if the trust says something I think is unfair?
You administer the document as written. Changing distributions because you disagree is a breach, even a well-intentioned one. Non-judicial agreements among all affected beneficiaries are sometimes possible with counsel.
Do I need to give beneficiaries a copy of the trust?
Anyone entitled to the statutory notice can request the full document and is entitled to receive it. Give it.
Can I resign?
Usually yes, under the trust's terms or by court order. You cannot resign to escape responsibility for what you already did.
Start a single ledger, on paper or in a spreadsheet, before you touch the first dollar. If you want a second set of eyes on your first ninety days, bring the ledger and the trust to a consultation at our Wilshire office.