California Trustee Won't Give You an Accounting or the Trust?

The short answer is yes, you are entitled to all of it. After a parent dies with a living trust, every beneficiary gets a formal notice from the trustee within 60 days, a true and complete copy of the trust on request, and an accounting at least once a year. A trust accounting in California is a legal duty, not a favor (Probate Code § 16062). If you ask in writing and the trustee stalls for 60 days, the probate court can order it (Probate Code § 17200).

Here's the thing most families in Silicon Valley get wrong. They ask by phone, nicely, for months. A phone call starts nothing. A dated letter starts a 60-day clock that ends in front of a judge.

What does a trustee have to give beneficiaries in California?

The trustee "has a duty to keep the beneficiaries of the trust reasonably informed of the trust and its administration" (Probate Code § 16060). Beneficiary rights to trust accounting, information, and a copy of the document all hang off that sentence.

The notice must tell you that you can ask for a copy of the trust (Probate Code § 16061.7(g)(5)), so the trustee's own letter is your invitation. And "heir" is a legal word: anyone who would inherit under state law if there were no will or trust (Probate Code § 44). So if you were cut out of the trust, you still get the notice and the copy. Our guide to the notification by trustee shows what a proper notice contains.

One exception: a living trust signed before July 1, 1987 is exempt from the yearly accounting duty (Probate Code § 16062(b)), though the duty to keep you informed still applies.

What must a trust accounting in California include?

A spreadsheet titled "what's left" is not an accounting. An account must contain six things (Probate Code § 16063):

1. Receipts and disbursements of principal and income since the last account.
2. The trust's assets and liabilities at the end of the period.
3. The trustee's compensation.
4. The agents the trustee hired, their relationship to the trustee, and their pay.
5. A statement that you may petition the court under Probate Code section 17200 to review the account and the trustee's acts.
6. A warning that claims for breach of trust are cut off three years after you receive an account or report disclosing the facts.

Read the last two again. A real accounting must tell you how to challenge it and warn you that a clock is running. Paper that does neither is not the accounting the law requires, though it may still have started the three-year clock covered below. Our guide to how a trust accounting is prepared shows the court's format, so you can compare it with what you got.

How do you demand a trust accounting from a trustee?

The court can order an accounting when the trustee "has failed to submit a requested account within 60 days after written request of the beneficiary" and no account was made in the six months before the request (Probate Code § 17200(b)(7)). Information requests work the same way. So put it in writing, date it, and keep proof of mailing.

Here is the paragraph that does the work:

I am a beneficiary and heir of the [Name] Family Trust. Under Probate Code sections 16061.5 and 16061.7, please send me a true and complete copy of the trust and every amendment. Under sections 16061 and 16062, please also send me an accounting from [date of death] to today, with the receipts, disbursements, assets, and liabilities that section 16063 requires, and the bank and brokerage statements behind them. I am sending this by certified mail and email on [date]. If I have not received these items within 60 days, I will ask the Santa Clara County Superior Court to order them under Probate Code section 17200.

Send it to the trustee's address on the notice and to the trustee's lawyer, if one has surfaced. The date on the letter is day one. Then wait the 60 days without calling to argue.

If you are the trustee who received a letter like this, our guide to how a trustee should respond to a demand for an accounting is for you.

What can the court do if the trustee refuses to account?

Trust disputes for Santa Clara County are heard by the probate court in San Jose. The tool is a Probate Code 17200 petition, which covers "the internal affairs of the trust" (Probate Code § 17200(a)). When a trustee refuses to give accounting records, the petition asks for some or all of these:

1. An order compelling a copy of the trust (Probate Code § 17200(b)(7)(A)).
2. An order compelling the information or accounting you requested (Probate Code § 17200(b)(7)(B), (C)).
3. Removal of the trustee; grounds include breach of trust and a trustee who "fails or declines to act" (Probate Code §§ 17200(b)(10), 15642(b)).
4. Redress for a breach "by any available remedy" (Probate Code § 17200(b)(12)).

Refusing to account is a breach, not a paperwork lapse, and it is the heart of most trust accounting disputes. A violation of any duty the trustee owes you is a breach of trust (Probate Code § 16400), and the remedies include an order to perform, removal, reduced fees, and a temporary trustee (Probate Code § 16420).

Silence is also evidence. A trustee who spends a year dodging a request for the statements from the Cupertino house sale has told the court something about those statements. And a trustee who never served the notice "shall be responsible for all damages, attorney's fees, and costs caused by the failure" unless the trustee made a reasonably diligent effort to comply (Probate Code § 16061.9).

Could paperwork you already received have started a three-year clock?

Here's the part that surprises people. A claim against a trustee for breach of trust is barred three years after you receive "an interim or final account in writing, or other written report, that adequately discloses the existence of a claim" (Probate Code § 16460). If nothing you received disclosed it, the three years run from when you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the problem.

A "written report" does not have to be a proper accounting (Probate Code § 16460(c)). A letter with a few numbers, or a stack of statements with a sticky note, can count if it gave you enough to know of the claim or to have asked. Courts do take concealment seriously: in Asaro v. Maniscalco the trustees never sent the notice, and the court applied the delayed discovery rule to a beneficiary they had kept in the dark.

The contest clock does not wait for the document either. The notice with the bold warning started 120 days to challenge the trust itself (Probate Code § 16061.8). A copy delivered inside that window gives you at least 60 days from delivery; a copy that never arrives pauses nothing. A notice whose warning was printed in the same plain type as the rest did not start the clock at all (Harustak v. Wilkins).

Filing late is worse than filing without the document: in Meiri v. Shamtoubi a contest filed months after the deadline was treated as one without probable cause, and the daughter lost her entire inheritance under the no-contest clause. The deadline wizard gives you the date; our guide to contest deadlines covers the exceptions.

What are the deadlines when a trustee will not give an accounting?

What should you do next?

1. Find the trustee's notice. Note the mailing date and whether the 120-day warning is in bold.
2. Send the demand letter above today, by certified mail and email. Save the receipts.
3. Calendar day 60. If nothing has arrived, a petition to compel is available.
4. Gather everything the trustee already sent you, with dates. One of those papers may have started a three-year clock.
5. Call a lawyer before day 60 if the trustee also gained most from a late amendment, or if a house has already been sold. If the accounting shows self-dealing, the next step is a petition to surcharge and remove the trustee.