A California trustee can be excused from liability for breaches of trust if a judge determines that it would be equitable to do so.
We see many situations where a family member trustee strays from the requirements of the trust instrument. Still, if the trustee does not favor himself or herself, and the beneficiary is not appreciably harmed, then the trustee may get a pass from the court under California Probate Code section 16440. That’s the lesson of Orange Catholic Foundation v. Arvizu (2018) 28 Cal.App.5th 283, published last month by the California Court of Appeal.
When attorneys advise errant trustees, how vulnerable are they to breach of trust claims by injured beneficiaries? A case published last week by the California Court of Appeal provides a defensive roadmap to attorneys who are sued for such claims, along with an occasion for golf metaphors.
California trust litigation often stems from disagreements and hostility among family member co-trustees. Rather than picking one of their kids to serve as sole successor trustee when they die or become incapacitated, Mom and Dad often appoint two or more of their children to act together as successor co-trustees.
One challenge that California trustees face is the prospect that confidential attorney-client communications will pass to successor trustees if they resign or are removed from office. The attorney-client privilege belongs to the client, but the client is the office of the trustee, not the incumbent who holds that office. Hence, the successor trustee generally gets to see the privileged communications of the predecessor, as the California Supreme Court explained in 
In our Sacramento trust and estate litigation practice there are several questions that come up over and over again. In many instances, these questions are the building blocks of our practice that lead to more complicated questions that sometimes require the filing of a lawsuit to answer. As a starting place, below are some of the more common questions we receive from trustees and from beneficiaries.
Beneficiaries beware: don’t dive in to trust litigation too quickly. That lesson was learned the hard way, ironically, by a diving heiress in 
Acting as a trustee can be a thankless and time consuming job, especially when the reward at the end is nothing more than second-guessing from trust beneficiaries. In our Sacramento-based trust and estate practice, we represent trustees who have strained relationships with beneficiaries, whether their siblings, step-relatives, or otherwise. One useful tool to help trustees manage those relationships is the Notice of Proposed Action.
In addition to bark, the Probate Code can have bite too. Some Probate Code sections have provisions that are punitive in nature and are designed to keep fiduciaries and others dealing with trust property in line. These statutes have sharp teeth.
In California trust administrations, the trustee is in the driver’s seat. The trustee marshals the assets, deals with creditors, and (except in the case of ongoing trusts) gets them distributed out to the beneficiaries in fractional shares per the terms of the trust. But what happens when the trustee favors himself as a beneficiary, disfavors a family member he/she dislikes, or simply falls asleep at the wheel?