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Florida Trust Litigation and Statute of Limitations- May 4,2016 Fourth DCA Trust Appeal

Uncategorized • May 5, 2016
post about Florida Trust Litigation and Statute of Limitations- May 4,2016 Fourth DCA Trust Appeal

Does a Florida trust beneficiary have six months or four years to sue a trustee for breach of fiduciary duty? If you are involved in a trust lawsuit West Palm Beach, or if you’re a beneficiary of a trust and other beneficiaries are suing the trustee, you need to know whether the statute of limitation is four years for breach of fiduciary duty or six months pursuant to a trust disclosure document. A May 4,2016 Fourth DCA opinion, regarding a Florida trust appeal, specifically discusses the statute of limitations that may protect a trustee of a Florida trust and also may help or hurt the beneficiary of a trust in Florida.

Statute of Limitations in Florida Probate & Trust Lawsuits

  • Your Florida trust lawyer has probably informed you about trust disclosure documents and limitation notices.
  • What are these?
  • They are legal concepts found in the Florida Trust Code that are intended to convey relevant information from a Florida trustee to a trust beneficiary.
  • In addition, trust disclosure documents and limitation notices can limit the statute of limitations or the time a trust beneficiary has to sue a trustee in Florida for matters that are adequately disclosed.
  • Most Florida trust litigators will tell you that, if you want to sue a trustee for failure to produce accountings or breach of fiduciary duty, you normally have four years.
  • However, in some cases, this statute of limitations may be limited to six months.

Woodward v.Woodward

  • Here, there was a 1996 lawsuit involving a trustee and a trust, which was dismissed
  • In 2011, accountings were served by the trustee.
  • On April 9, 2012, one of beneficiaries filed a lawsuit against the trustee alleging breach of fiduciary duty.
  • Evidentially, the trustee had taken the assets from the trust, terminated the trust, and put those assets into two other trusts.
  • There were a number of defenses raised by the trustee including res judicata andlaches but , in addition, the issue of statute of limitations came up.
  • The Florida Trust Code says that a trustee has to provide annual accounting.
  • However, sometimes, Florida trustees fail to do this.
  • If  there are no accountings filed for a number of years, this case suggests that the statute of limitations to sue for failure of accounting or breach of fidiciary duty doesn’t begin until the trustee provides a trust disclosure document to a beneficiary.
  • Then, the statute of limitations may be six months or four years depending on the facts.
  • “When a matter is adequately disclosed in a trust disclosure document, a beneficiary must bring an action against a trustee for breach of trust within six months after receipt.”
  • What is a trust disclosure document in Florida probate litigation?
  • Here, the court recognized that a six month statute of limitations may be applicable when there’s been a limitations notice and a trust disclosure document provided to a Florida beneficiary.
  • Therefore, you should not ignore any mail or emails that you are getting from a trustee.
  • If you do not understand the content in the letters or emails, you should hire a trust lawyer Delray Beach to help you to understand them and to decipher them for you.
  • Click here to read more about the statute of limitations that may affect your probate or trust lawsuit Boca Raton.

    Want to know more about Florida probate litigation? Consider these free resources: