Trust Litigation FAQ: 5 Questions Answered

Five short video answers on coercion, standing, family conflict and a trustee's distribution duties, from a California and Texas trust litigation firm.

RMO Lawyers is a trust and probate litigation firm that represents trustees and beneficiaries in trust disputes across California and Texas. Its YouTube channel runs a series of short explainers on the questions people actually ask about contesting a trust. Five of them are transcribed and expanded below, from a 39-second definition to a 6-minute walk-through of a trustee's duties.

The five clips below are about trust disputes specifically. If you are not sure whether your situation involves a trust or a will, wills and trusts differ covers how to tell the two apart, and grounds for contesting a will covers the will side.

What is trust litigation?

At its simplest, trust litigation is a court dispute over a trust, one part of a loved one's estate plan. But the document itself is rarely the whole story. Behind most of these cases sits a family disagreement over whether the plan reflects what the person who created the trust actually wanted, whether that means someone was left out, or someone else ended up with more than expected.

Working out what your rights are, and what the other side is or isn't required to do, is not something a general page like this one can answer for a specific trust. That takes a lawyer who can look at the actual document and the actual facts.

What if the person who created the trust was coerced?

Coercion is a form of undue influence, and RMO Lawyers describes a fairly standard path once it's suspected. The first step is usually trying to resolve the issue directly, engaging with the person accused of the coercion to see whether the result of that pressure can be reversed without a court fight. When that doesn't work, the next step is filing suit in probate court to invalidate whatever the coerced person gave up.

Most cases that reach this point still settle, either through direct negotiation, a court-run settlement conference, or private mediation, often with a retired probate judge. A case that doesn't settle goes to trial in the same probate court.

Can you actually fight a trust in court?

Yes, but two things have to be true first. You need legal standing, meaning a genuine financial stake in the outcome, and you need to act inside whatever filing deadline applies to your claim.

Standing doesn't require being named as a beneficiary. RMO Lawyers points to a few other ways to establish it: being an heir who would inherit without the trust in place, or being able to show you were named as a beneficiary in an earlier version of the document and were later dropped.

The deadline point is the one worth taking seriously. Missing the filing window that applies to a given claim will, in almost all instances, end that claim permanently, which is the same warning this site gives on why the timing matters more generally.

Source: RMO Lawyers, "Can You Fight a Trust In Court?"

Will contesting a trust divide my family?

Often, but not always, and RMO Lawyers is candid that the emotional issues behind a trust contest usually predate it rather than being created by it. Filing a contest can sharpen an existing divide, but it can also bring some family members closer together, particularly when the dispute is genuinely about fairness rather than money.

What actually helps a case succeed is specificity: clear reasons for the contest, evidence that backs them up, and witnesses who can corroborate the account. A trust litigation attorney's job through the rest of the process, discovery, depositions, mediation and, if needed, trial, is largely to carry that case forward on your behalf; you generally don't need to be at every court hearing yourself.

What are a trustee's duties around distributions?

This one is specific to California. Under California's Probate Code (Section 16000), a trustee has a duty to administer the trust according to its own instrument, which includes following whatever distribution directions that document sets out. RMO Lawyers recommends that a trustee review the instrument carefully, and consult a trust attorney, before acting on any distribution request.

A trustee generally has discretion to approve or deny a distribution request, but that discretion is bounded: a request that would violate the trust's own terms has to be declined, and any discretionary approval has to weigh the fiduciary duty owed to every beneficiary, not just the one asking. A trustee can also make a partial, or preliminary, distribution before the full administration is complete, if the remaining assets are still enough to manage the trust's affairs.

When a beneficiary keeps demanding a distribution the trust doesn't allow, RMO Lawyers' advice is to explain the relevant provision, decline the request, and bring in a trust litigation lawyer if the beneficiary won't accept that answer or threatens legal action. When the dispute goes further, questioning whether the trustee should keep the role at all rather than just this one distribution decision, trust litigation attorney: trustee removal covers that separate route under Florida law.

Source: RMO Lawyers, "The Trustee's Guide to Trust Distributions"

General information, not legal advice. RMO Lawyers is a California and Texas firm; several of the points above are general practice rather than any one state's statute, but the trustee-distribution duty above is California law specifically. Whether any of this applies to your own trust, and what a court in your state would do with it, is a question for a lawyer admitted where the trust is being administered.