Probate Code Section 16061

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 a trustee when claiming a fee in a prior post and now consider how a beneficiary can monitor, evaluate and object to a trustee’s fee.

Diver Down FlagBeneficiaries 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 how much information a trustee must give to a beneficiary, and what consequences may (or may not) befall a noncompliant trustee.