Three ways to know a thing
This is a short section that does a lot of work, because deadlines in the Florida Trust Code run from knowledge rather than from events. The clock in section 736.1008 is the obvious example.
Subject to subsection (2), a person has knowledge of a fact if the person:
(a) Has actual knowledge of the fact;
(b) Has received a notice or notification of the fact; or
(c) Has reason to know the fact from all the other facts and circumstances known to the person at the time in question.
Section 736.0104(1), Florida Statutes.
Paragraph (a) is what people mean by knowing. Paragraph (b) is administrative. A notice was sent and received, whether or not it was read. Paragraph (c) is the dangerous one. It attributes knowledge you did not have, on the basis of what you did have, and it is how a beneficiary who never received an accounting can still find a limitations period running.
Note the words at the time in question. Reason to know is assessed on what the person knew then, not on what became obvious later.
Organizations know differently
Subsection (2) exists because a bank is not a person and cannot know anything. It provides that an organization has notice or knowledge of a fact involving a trust only from the time the information reached an employee with responsibility to act on matters involving that trust, or would have reached that employee had the organization exercised reasonable diligence.
It then defines reasonable diligence as maintaining reasonable routines for communicating significant information to the responsible employee, and reasonably complying with those routines. And it adds a limit. Reasonable diligence does not require an employee to pass on information unless doing so is part of their regular duties, or they know a trust matter would be materially affected.
Read from a beneficiary’s side, this is a shield. Telling a branch teller is not telling the trustee. Read from the corporate trustee’s side it is a standard, because an institution with no routines at all cannot claim the protection.
The only Florida decision on this section
A search for this section number returns exactly one document in the whole of Florida, and it is a 2023 Second District appeal about whether a settlor validly amended his trust. His method required delivery of the amendment to the trustees, and one trustee never got it. The proponent argued he knew anyway.
Violetta argues that despite the lack of delivery, Paul still had constructive knowledge of these events under section 736.0104(1)(c)’s definition of knowledge.
Grassfield v. Grassfield (Fla. 2d DCA Dec. 13, 2023), footnote 4.
The court rejected it. Its reasoning was that the argument ignored the plain language of the trust, which required delivery to a trustee rather than merely knowledge by one. It then added a second, independent ground.
And even if a trustee’s knowledge was sufficient, Violetta did not satisfy her burden on summary judgment to prove Paul’s knowledge.
Grassfield v. Grassfield, same footnote.
Two points come out of that, and both are useful.
First, this section defines knowledge; it does not convert knowledge into performance. Where the trust instrument, or the Code, requires an act, showing that someone knew about the act is not the same as doing it.
Second, knowledge is a fact to be proved. The party asserting it carries the burden, and on summary judgment that is a real obstacle. The evidence in that case was unusually specific. The trustee still had access to the online account, looked at the portfolio every few months, and said he usually would not look at the statements. It was not enough.
Where this section actually bites
Nobody litigates section 736.0104 on its own. It arrives inside another argument, almost always about time. When a trustee says a claim is too late, the question underneath is when the beneficiary knew, and that is answered here.
It is worth reading together with section 736.0109, which governs how notice may be given, including by posting to a website. The two interlock. One decides what counts as being told, and the other decides what counts as knowing.