Beneficiary Rights Attorney in Newbury Park

Beneficiary Rights Attorney in Newbury Park

Newbury Park is part of the City of Thousand Oaks, and the planning here follows a Conejo Valley pattern: two children, both trusted equally, both named as co-trustees so neither feels passed over. It reads as fair on the day the trust is signed.

It is also the single most common reason a Newbury Park administration stops moving, and beneficiaries usually misdiagnose what has gone wrong.

Two co-trustees means either one can stop everything

§ 15620 is the default rule: where a trust has more than one trustee, they must act unanimously unless the instrument provides otherwise. Many trusts do provide otherwise, allowing a majority or giving one trustee authority to act alone. Many do not, and the drafting is often accidental rather than considered.

Where unanimity applies, one co-trustee who will not sign is enough to halt a sale, a distribution, or the funding of a subtrust indefinitely. No dishonesty is required. A co-trustee who simply disagrees, or who has stopped answering, produces the same paralysis as one acting in bad faith.

This matters for what you ask for. A beneficiary who files demanding an accounting from a deadlocked pair usually gets an accounting and no movement, because the accounting was never the problem. What breaks a deadlock is a petition for instructions, or removal of one trustee, and those ask the court for something different.

Working out whether it is deadlock or something worse

Start with information rather than accusation. § 16060 requires the trustee to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed of the trust and its administration, and § 16061 requires a report of information relevant to your interest on reasonable request. Directed at both co-trustees separately, those requests tend to surface the disagreement quickly, because two people who are stuck rarely give the same answer.

§ 16062(a) is the accounting duty and it runs to beneficiaries currently entitled to income or principal. Note that in a co-trustee trust the accounting duty is joint. Neither trustee gets to point at the other and treat the obligation as somebody else’s.

If the trust document does permit majority or independent action, the analysis changes completely, because then one trustee’s refusal is not blocking anything and the delay has a different cause. Read the trustee-powers article before assuming § 15620 applies.

What has to happen before a court will order an accounting

§ 17200(b)(7)(C) requires that the trustee failed to submit a requested account within 60 days after your written request and that no account was made in the six months preceding that request. Both, not either. § 17200(b)(7)(B) applies the same structure to information.

Serve the request on both co-trustees and keep proof of both. A co-trustee who never received the request is a defense, and it is an easy one to avoid handing over.

Where a Newbury Park trust petition is heard

Ventura County hears probate, trust, conservatorship and guardianship matters at the Juvenile Justice Center, 4353 E. Vineyard Avenue in Oxnard, usually Courtroom J6, about 25 minutes from Newbury Park.

If a petition becomes necessary, § 17203 requires at least 30 days’ notice of the hearing to all trustees and beneficiaries, and the court cannot shorten it. In a deadlock that notice period is often the thing that produces a resolution, because a co-trustee who would not answer a letter tends to answer a hearing date.

Questions Newbury Park beneficiaries ask

Both my siblings are trustees and neither will move. What do I actually file? Probably not an accounting petition. If § 15620 unanimity applies and one will not sign, an accounting will not unstick it. A petition for instructions asks the court to decide the specific question they are stuck on. A removal petition under § 15642 asks it to take one of them out. Which one fits depends on why they are stuck.

Does the trust say they have to agree? § 15620 makes unanimity the default where there is more than one trustee, but the instrument can and often does override it. Find the trustee-powers article and read it before assuming. If it allows majority or independent action, one holdout is not the obstacle you think it is.

One co-trustee is doing all the work and the other has vanished. Is that a breach? A trustee who has stopped participating is a problem even without bad faith, and where unanimity applies an absent trustee is functionally blocking the trust. Resignation or removal are the clean routes. The accounting duty stays joint in the meantime, so the working trustee cannot treat the absence as an excuse.

Can I make them account separately? The duty under § 16062 is owed by the trustees, and in practice one account covering the administration is what gets produced. What you can do is direct your written request to each of them, which removes any argument later that one never got it.

Can a court just pick one of them and let the trust move? Effectively, yes. Removal under § 15642 is the deadlock remedy, and a petition for instructions is the narrower version where the court decides the one question they are stuck on rather than replacing anybody. The § 16420 remedies are still there if the delay itself caused a loss, and a trustee who opposes removal in bad faith can be charged with your fees under § 15642(d).

Talk to Eric or call 805-244-5291. I serve Newbury Park and all of Ventura County.

For the statewide rules, see beneficiary rights in a California trust and the duty to inform and account. If the co-trustees cannot agree and nothing is moving, how to remove a trustee covers what a petition actually asks for.