4 Reasons to Bring a Florida Trust Lawsuit (or not)
Let me guess, mom or dad died in Boca Raton with a few bucks and a revocable living trust that is now anIrrevocable Florida Family Trust and you are a beneficiary. With questions! Or, maybe your rich aunt from Jupiter Island passed away and made you the trustee of her family trust and now you have to run the trust according to Florida trust law. YOU have questions. So, if you are involved with a Florida trust, most trust lawyers West Palm Beach will tell you to pick up the phone & talk with the people who you need information from. Don’t get along with your trustee or your trust beneficiaries? Having trouble with the trust? OK, here are 4 reasons to bring a Florida trust lawsuit if negotiation, plain old talking on the phone, and asking nicely, do not work.
- My Florida Trustee Won’t Tell Me Where the Money Is. One big complaint is that trust beneficiaries from Boston to Boca Raton say that they don’t know what’s going on with their mom’s trust, or dad’s trust. Everyone in Palm Beach County, it seems, has arevocable trust to hold money and assets and then leave inheritances when they die. A trustee is appointed to run the trust. In Florida Trust Law, the trustee has to tell youwhere the money is: no hiding the ball, no being evasive and no running the trust in secret.
- Why Isn’t My Trust Share Being Given to Me? Many times, a trust beneficiary who is supposed to get an inheritance from a Florida trustee just
does not. What if the trust says, when mom dies, give one third of the trust to each of my three children and mom has been dead for two years now? Why? There might be good reasons, like the trust document says to hold the money until you reach a certain age. Or, maybe therevocable trust needs to operate hand in hand with your mom or dad’s Palm Beachprobate estate and that living trust which mom made while living in Lake Worth needs to pay the expenses of the probate administration, which is still on going. Your trustee should tell you this. If you are not getting answers, that’s a bad thing. If your trustee is ignoring you, that’s a very bad thing. Don’t be a pain, but your trustee of your Florida trust should be giving to you what the Florida Trust Code calls “relevant information.”
Want to read the Florida Trust Code right now and learn about Florida trust beneficiary rightsand trustee obligations & duties? Here is a link to read the Florida Trust Code for free:http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0736/0736ContentsIndex.html&StatuteYear=2015&Title=%2D%3E2015%2D%3EChapter%20736
3. What Did the Prior Trustee Do with All the Money? If you are a new trustee, taking over for a former trustee, then trust litigators Palm Beach call you a successor trustee. You’re in charge. We wish you much success managing this trust, because it’s a part time job and you have to deal with beneficiaries and lawyers ! Good luck. But what if you don’t understand why there isn’t more money in the trust and you wonder about money that went out of the trust under the last trustee. What do you do as the successor trustee of theFlorida Family Trust? Well, two things you should know about: one, you have a duty to your beneficiaries to get their money and to understand what $ was spent; and two, you may need to sue the prior trustee if they did something bad. In fact, if you, the new trustee of the Palm Beach trust, can’t figure out what the other trustee did, you may need to file a declaratory judgment action in probate court Palm Beach if the other trustee is not cooperating with you. You shouldn’t have to, but trust lawyers Palm Beach Gardens see this scenario a lot.
4. The Trustee is Taking Too Much in Fees. This is a big issue with trust beneficiaries. Now, here’s the short cut secret about fees for Florida Trustees: Florida trustees are entitled to get paid for their work. It’s called “reasonable compensation” to the Florida trusteeand it can be based on a percentage of all the trust money or assets which the trustee is running or administering. Or, the Palm Beach trustee could get paid by the hour for work that they do, plus get reimbursed for costs and expenses. Do the trust math. Crunch the Palm Beach trust numbers. Trustees deserve to get paid and should get paid. But if a trustee is getting paid too much, you have an issue.
So, in the end, don’t get sue crazy over a Florida trust. Try to work things out. Remember that the “loser” in a Palm Beach trust lawsuit can be made to pay the other side’s attorneys fees. And don’t just sue to sue: make sure there is a basis in law or fact for the legal position you take about your Florida trust.