The Successor Trustee's First 90 Days in Florida

Your mother named you successor trustee of her revocable trust eleven years ago. You signed nothing at the time and thought about it once, briefly. She died on a Tuesday. By Thursday two of your siblings have asked when they are getting their money and a bank has told you it cannot discuss the account.

Nobody gives a new trustee an instruction sheet. This is meant to be one for the first ninety days; for the fuller arc of an administration, see a trustee's step-by-step guide. What Florida gives you instead is a set of duties that begin running immediately, a sixty-day notice requirement most first-time trustees have never heard of, and personal liability if you get it wrong. The good news is that the first ninety days are largely procedural. Very little of it requires judgment. Almost all of it requires order.

Being named in a trust document does not make you trustee. Acceptance does. And you are not obliged to accept.

Before you do, read the trust instrument — the whole thing, including the amendments — and form a rough view of what the job involves. A trust holding a house, a brokerage account, and two beneficiaries who get along is a manageable few months of work. A trust holding a closely held business, an out-of-state property, and a sibling who has already retained counsel is a different undertaking, and there is no obligation to take it on because a document names you. If you decline, the instrument usually names an alternate; if it does not, the Trust Code provides for appointment. Declining is cleanest before acceptance and considerably messier afterward, because a trustee who has begun administering and then resigns still has to account for what happened on their watch.

If you do accept, accept deliberately and note the date. The sixty-day clock runs from it.

Collect, in this order.

Certified death certificates: six to ten is typical. Every financial institution will want one and most will not return it. Some require a copy showing the cause of death and others require one that does not; ordering both versions saves a second trip.

The complete trust instrument: the original signed document, every amendment and restatement, and any schedule of assets attached to it. A trust administered under a superseded restatement is a problem that surfaces at distribution.

The will: even where a trust holds everything, there is usually a pour-over will. In Florida, an original will generally must be deposited with the clerk of the court within a set period after death, whether or not anyone intends to open a probate. Find out who has the original.

An asset inventory: bank and brokerage statements, deeds, vehicle titles, insurance policies, retirement accounts, business interests, safe deposit boxes, digital accounts. For each one, establish how it is titled. This matters more than anything else in the first two weeks.

That last point deserves emphasis, because it is the most common surprise in Florida trust administration. A trust only controls what was actually transferred into it. Families routinely sign a trust and then never retitle the house, or open a new brokerage account years later in an individual name. An individually owned asset with no joint owner and no payable-on-death, transfer-on-death, or beneficiary designation does not pass under the trust — it passes under the pour-over will, through probate, which is the empty trust problem the trust was created to avoid. Retirement accounts and life insurance are usually a separate story, since they typically pass by their own beneficiary designation regardless of how the trust is funded — but it is still worth confirming those designations actually name the people the family intends, rather than an ex-spouse or a beneficiary who predeceased. Discovering an unfunded asset in week two is inconvenient. Discovering it in month eight, after you have told the beneficiaries there will be no probate, is considerably worse.

This is the obligation new trustees miss.

Section 736.0813 of the Florida Statutes imposes a duty to keep the qualified beneficiaries of an irrevocable trust reasonably informed. It has two sixty-day triggers. Within sixty days after acceptance of the trust, the trustee must notify the qualified beneficiaries of the acceptance and of the trustee's full name and address. And within sixty days after acquiring knowledge of the creation of an irrevocable trust — or of the fact that a formerly revocable trust has become irrevocable — the trustee must give notice of the trust's existence, the identity of the settlor, the beneficiary's right to request a copy of the trust instrument, and the right to accountings.

When the settlor of a revocable trust dies, the trust becomes irrevocable. Both triggers usually fire at once.

The Trust Code defines the term, and it is broader than "the people getting money now." It reaches current beneficiaries and certain contingent and remainder beneficiaries — including people who will take only if someone else dies first. New trustees regularly notify the three children named as immediate beneficiaries and overlook a remainder class entirely.

Get the list right at the outset. A notice sent to an incomplete list is not compliance, and the omitted beneficiary's rights are not affected by the fact that you did not think of them.

At minimum, the statutory content: the trust's existence, the settlor's identity, your name and address as trustee, the right to request a copy of the trust instrument, and the right to accountings. Send it in a way that produces proof of delivery and keep the proof.

Two reasons, both understandable. The trustee does not know the duty exists. Or the trustee knows and does not want to — because notifying a difficult sibling feels like inviting a fight, and staying quiet feels like keeping the peace.

It is not keeping the peace. It is deferring the fight to a point at which the trustee's silence has become the beneficiary's best evidence. A beneficiary who learns eighteen months later that a trust existed, that assets have been sold, and that nobody told them, arrives at a lawyer's office already believing something was hidden. Very often nothing was. The trustee's conduct after the death created the suspicion, not anything in the trust. Where a dispute has already hardened, mediation often resolves it faster than litigation.

Separately, the duty to inform is bound up with limitations under section 736.1008: prompt, complete disclosure is what starts the clock on a beneficiary's ability to bring claims. Silence keeps that clock stopped, which protects the beneficiary and not the trustee.

Obtain a taxpayer identification number for the trust. On the settlor's death the trust ceases to operate under their Social Security number, and no bank will move without an EIN. Applying is free and can be done directly with the IRS; there is no reason to pay a service for it.

Open a dedicated trust checking account and route everything through it. Never run trust funds through a personal account, even briefly, even if you intend to reimburse it that afternoon. Commingling is the fastest route from an ordinary administration to a surcharge action, and it is not curable by good intentions.

Secure physical property. Change locks on a vacant house, confirm the homeowner's insurance carrier knows the house is unoccupied — most policies restrict coverage on a vacancy — and keep the utilities on. Photograph the contents before anyone starts sorting through them; personal property disputes are the most common family fight in trust administration, and they are almost always about items nobody documented.

Value the assets as of the date of death. Real property should be appraised by a licensed appraiser, not estimated from an online valuation. That date-of-death value establishes basis for capital gains purposes when the asset is later sold, and it anchors your accounting.

The decedent's final individual income tax return will be due for the year of death, and the trust will likely need to file a fiduciary income tax return once it has income. Where the estate is large enough to require a federal estate tax return — or where a surviving spouse may want to preserve the deceased spouse's unused exclusion — a return may be due nine months after death, and portability requires an affirmative election on a timely filed return even where no tax is owed. That is a conversation to have in the first months, not the ninth.

Identify debts and handle them in the correct order. A trustee who distributes to beneficiaries and then discovers a creditor has created a problem the beneficiaries are unlikely to help solve.

Do not distribute early. The pressure is intense — a beneficiary who needs money, a sibling who will not stop calling — and giving in to it is the most common way a well-meaning trustee ends up personally liable. Partial distributions can sometimes be made responsibly, with reserves and releases, but that is a decision to make with advice rather than at the end of a difficult phone call.

Section 736.0813 requires the trustee of an irrevocable trust to provide a trust accounting to each qualified beneficiary at least annually, and on termination of the trust or a change of trustee. Section 736.08135 sets out what an accounting must contain: identification of the trust, the trustee, and the period covered; all cash and property transactions and all significant transactions affecting administration; compensation paid to the trustee and the trustee's agents; gains and losses realized; two values for each asset capable of valuation, being the carrying value and the estimated current value; each known noncontingent liability with an estimated current amount; the allocation of receipts and disbursements between income and principal; and, in a final accounting, a plan of distribution for undistributed assets.

That is a specific format, and a spreadsheet of the checking account does not satisfy it.

Start keeping records on day one in the form the accounting will eventually require. Reconstructing a year of transactions after the fact costs several times what contemporaneous recordkeeping costs, and it produces a document that looks reconstructed — which invites exactly the scrutiny a trustee wants to avoid.

Missing the sixty-day notice, or sending it to an incomplete beneficiary list. Commingling trust money into a personal account, once, for a day. Answering "when do I get my money" with silence — beneficiaries tolerate delay, they do not tolerate not knowing. Distributing before debts, taxes, and expenses are resolved. Selling the house to a family member at a favorable price — even where everyone agrees at the time, a self-dealing transaction is the first thing a later-unhappy beneficiary's lawyer will find. And serving as trustee while also being a beneficiary, without acknowledging the tension: it is common and permissible, but it also means every discretionary decision benefits or costs you personally, and documenting your reasoning contemporaneously is worth far more than explaining it afterward. See our overview of trustee responsibilities for how these duties fit together.

A trustee is generally entitled to reasonable compensation and to reimbursement of properly incurred expenses. Some trust instruments specify a formula; most do not. Two practical rules: pay yourself from the trust account, never from an asset directly, and record it; and disclose your compensation to the beneficiaries as you take it, rather than presenting it in a final accounting eighteen months later. Undisclosed fees discovered at the end of an administration reliably produce objections, even when the amounts are entirely reasonable.

Read the complete trust instrument and all amendments. Decide whether to accept, and note the acceptance date. Order certified death certificates. Locate the original will and confirm the deposit obligation is met. Build the asset inventory and confirm how each asset is titled. Identify every qualified beneficiary, including remainder beneficiaries. Send the section 736.0813 notice within 60 days, with proof of delivery. Obtain an EIN for the trust. Open a dedicated trust bank account. Secure real property and confirm insurance covers a vacancy. Obtain date-of-death valuations, including a licensed appraisal of real property. Identify debts, final expenses, and tax filing obligations. Determine whether a federal estate tax return or portability election is needed. Begin contemporaneous records in accounting format. Establish a communication rhythm with beneficiaries and keep to it.

How long does a successor trustee have to notify beneficiaries in Florida? Sixty days. Under Fla. Stat. § 736.0813, a trustee must notify the qualified beneficiaries within sixty days after accepting the trust, and within sixty days after learning that a trust has become irrevocable — which is what happens when the settlor of a revocable trust dies.

Do I have to give beneficiaries a copy of the trust? The statute requires notifying qualified beneficiaries of their right to request a copy of the trust instrument. In practice, providing it on request is both the obligation and the sensible course; withholding it produces suspicion out of proportion to whatever is being withheld.

Can I be paid for serving as trustee? Generally yes — reasonable compensation, plus reimbursement of properly incurred expenses, unless the trust instrument provides otherwise. Take it from the trust account, record it, and disclose it as you go.

What if the trust was never funded? Then the assets left outside it pass under the pour-over will, through probate. This is common and it is not fatal, but it changes the plan and it needs to be identified early rather than announced late.

How long does trust administration take in Florida? An uncomplicated administration with cooperative beneficiaries and liquid assets is often several months. Real property to sell, a business interest, tax filings, or a dispute extends that considerably. Any timeline offered before the assets are inventoried is a guess.

Most trustee liability comes from procedure, not from bad faith. The trustees who get into difficulty are usually the ones who did their best without knowing what the statute required of them and by when.

Yergey & Yergey, P.A. has guided Central Florida trustees through trust administration for three generations, from our Orlando office and across Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Brevard, and Volusia Counties. If you have just been named successor trustee, an early conversation is the cheapest part of the entire administration. See also notice to beneficiaries for the notice requirements in more depth, and what trustees and beneficiaries need to know under Chapter 736 for the fuller statutory picture.

Request a consultation before your sixty days run.