Your mother has passed away, and your brother is now trustee, but weeks later you still have not seen the document covering her home and savings. Should you keep waiting or start asking questions? Florida law gives many beneficiaries specific rights to trust information once a trust takes effect. Here is what you can request.
Know when your rights as a beneficiary begin
With a revocable trust, the creator (called the settlor) can change or cancel it while alive. During that period, the trustee owes duties only to the settlor, so beneficiaries usually cannot see trust records. At the settlor’s death, the trust typically becomes irrevocable and its terms generally become fixed.
The trustee’s reporting duties then shift to qualified beneficiaries. In plain terms, these are living people who can receive trust money now or would be next in line if earlier interests ended or the trust closed.
Request a copy of the trust
Once the trust is irrevocable, you can ask the trustee for the full document. Under Florida’s duty to inform statute, a trustee must give a qualified beneficiary a complete copy of the trust upon reasonable request. A summary or selected pages may omit amendments, distribution terms or other conditions that affect your interest.
Look for the trustee’s required notice
Florida law also requires the trustee to alert qualified beneficiaries after certain changes in the trust’s status. When a trustee learns that a trust is now irrevocable, the trustee generally has 60 days to send that notice.
The notice should identify the trust and the person who created it. It should also explain that qualified beneficiaries may obtain the trust document and receive trustee reports. Florida law further requires the trustee to notify beneficiaries that the trustee’s communications with the trustee’s lawyer generally remain private.
This rule does not apply to trusts that became irrevocable before July 1, 2007, when the Florida Trust Code took effect. Even so, a trustee’s fiduciary duties include keeping qualified beneficiaries reasonably informed.
Review accountings for trust activity
An accounting is a report on trust money and property over a set period. Florida generally requires regular annual reporting to qualified beneficiaries. Another accounting may also be required when trust administration ends or a new trustee takes over.
Florida’s trust accounting requirements call for the report to show receipts, payments, gains, losses and the trustee’s pay. The accounting should also identify assets with estimated values and disclose any known debts. A beneficiary may decline these reports in writing, then reverse that choice for later reporting periods.
Ask for details about trust administration
Your rights go beyond the document and yearly reports. On reasonable request, a trustee must also share relevant facts about the trust’s assets, debts and management. For example, you might ask why real estate remains unsold or when the trustee expects to make distributions.
Use unanswered questions to plan your next step
A late reply or missing accounting does not automatically mean a trustee has done something wrong. Trustees are often family members juggling grief and paperwork of their own. Still, repeated unanswered requests or records with significant gaps may deserve closer attention.
Keep a simple timeline of what you asked for, when you asked and what you received. That documentation can help an estate litigation attorney evaluate whether the problem is an ordinary delay or a developing trust dispute.