This blog post views a trustee’s fee from the beneficiary’s perspective. Under California law, a trustee generally can set his or her own fee and collect it without prior disclosure to the beneficiaries. What can a beneficiary, who sees a hand reaching too greedily in the trust cookie jar, do in response? We discussed best practices for … Continue Reading
Beneficiaries beware: don’t dive in to trust litigation too quickly. That lesson was learned the hard way, ironically, by a diving heiress in Williamson v. Brooks (2017) 7 Cal.App.5th 1294. The California Court of Appeal decision, which related to a trust created by the founder of Kirby Morgan Dive Systems, Inc., addresses the question of … Continue Reading