What are General Duties that a Florida Trustee Must Do?
What are some general duties that a Florida trustee MUST do? What should your trust litigator in West Palm Beach know about these duties? If a trustee in Florida fails to fulfill their duties you may have an action for breach of fiduciary duty of the trustee, and be entitled to cash damages.
Under the Florida Trust Code, a trustee has the following duties:
- Duty to Administer the Trust in good faith and accordance with its purposes and the Florida trust code.
- Duty of Loyalty. A trustee cannot engage in self dealing for its own advantage of profit, it must be loyal to the trust and beneficiaries. The trustee violates the duty of loyalty any time a transaction is entered for the trustee’s own advantage or benefit. These are general voidable by the court.
- Duty of Prudence. The trustee must administer the trust as a prudent person would after considering the purpose of the trust, its terms, what the circumstances of the trust and market are etc. The trustee also cannot incur unreasonable expenses.
- Duty of Special Skills means that a trustee with special skills will be held responsibleto utilize those skills. So for example if two people have their sons act as trustees and one is an investment banker they will be held to a higher standard.
- Duty to control, collect and protect the trust property, and assets.
- Duty of Impartiality. If a trust has more than one beneficiaries, the trustee must act impartially in administering the trust assets, giving dual consideration to the beneficiaries respective interests.
- Duty to keep records. This duty includes a duty to not comingle funds with his own. In other words he must keep good records and his funds separated.
- Duty to Account. The trustee must keep the trust accounted for using reasonable accounting measures. Recently Florida law was amended to require an annual accounting disclosure.
- Duty to Distribute. A trustee must distribute funds per the terms of the trust. In the event the document is not clear on distributions the trustee usually has to distribute annually.
- Duties Regarding Tax. It is the trustee’s duty to file all necessary tax returns.
To learn more about this, check out the Florida Trust Code by clicking here.