The section fills three gaps in one definition
Florida gives qualified beneficiaries real leverage. They must be kept reasonably informed, they get accountings, and on a number of questions the Code gives them a vote. The definition that produces that status is built around people who are receiving distributions or standing next in line, and what it buys them is set out in the duty to inform and account.
That definition misses three people it should not miss. Section 736.0110 puts them back.
A charity named in a charitable trust
A charitable organization expressly designated to receive distributions under the terms of a charitable trust has the rights of a qualified beneficiary under this code if the charitable organization, on the date the charitable organization’s qualification is being determined:
(a) Is a distributee or permissible distributee of trust income or principal;
(b) Would be a distributee or permissible distributee of trust income or principal on termination of the interests of other distributees or permissible distributees then receiving or eligible to receive distributions; or
(c) Would be a distributee or permissible distributee of trust income or principal if the trust terminated on that date.
Section 736.0110(1), Florida Statutes.
Two words carry the weight. The charity must be expressly designated, so a trust that directs distributions to charitable purposes generally, leaving the trustee to choose recipients, does not confer this status on the charities the trustee happens to pick. And the tests run on the date qualification is being determined, which means status can be gained and lost as a trust moves through its stages.
The three tests are the familiar ones. Paragraph (a) catches a charity being paid now or eligible to be paid now. Paragraph (b) catches the charity waiting behind the current recipients. Paragraph (c) is the hypothetical termination test, which asks who would take if the trust ended today.
The person who enforces an animal or purpose trust
A person appointed to enforce a trust created for the care of an animal or another noncharitable purpose as provided in s. 736.0408 or s. 736.0409 has the rights of a qualified beneficiary under this code.
Section 736.0110(2), Florida Statutes.
This is the quietest sentence in the section and it solves a genuine problem. A trust for the care of an animal has no beneficiary who can complain. Neither does a trust for a noncharitable purpose, which is what section 736.0409 permits. Without this provision the trustee of such a trust would owe the information and accounting duties to nobody at all.
So the enforcer stands in. Anyone appointed under section 736.0408 for an animal trust, or under section 736.0409 for another noncharitable purpose, gets the rights a beneficiary would have had. If you have been named to that role and are not receiving accountings, this is your authority.
The Attorney General, and what changed in 2025
Subsection (3) is the part with recent history. It now reads in two paragraphs. The first is longstanding.
The Attorney General may assert the rights of a qualified beneficiary with respect to a charitable trust having its principal place of administration in this state. The Attorney General has standing to assert such rights in any judicial proceedings.
Section 736.0110(3)(a), Florida Statutes.
The second did not exist before 2025.
Where the Attorney General asserts the rights of a qualified beneficiary as provided in paragraph (a), the Attorney General has the exclusive authority to represent the general public, unnamed charitable beneficiaries, and any person other than a named charitable beneficiary having a special interest in a charitable trust, in any judicial proceedings within this state or elsewhere, with respect to all matters relating to the administration of the charitable trust, including, and without limitation, contract and trust law claims relating to charitable distributions and the exercise of trustee powers. The Attorney General of another state or any other public officer of another state does not have standing to assert such rights or interests.
Section 736.0110(3)(b), Florida Statutes, added by s. 1, ch. 2025-18.
We checked this against the session law itself rather than inferring it from the history line. In the enrolled bill the whole of paragraph (b) appears underlined and nothing is struck through, which is the drafting convention for new language. That paragraph is an addition, not a rearrangement.
Two things follow. The word exclusive displaces the common law special interest doctrine, under which a person with a sufficient stake in a charitable trust could sue to enforce it. And the closing sentence removes another state’s attorney general from the field entirely. The same act added a matching sentence to section 736.0405(3) and a cross-reference to this subsection at the end of section 736.0106.
What the legislative record says
We read the six committee analyses prepared for the 2025 bill and its companion. They name the litigation. A Senate footnote cites Jennings v. Durden and records that the Florida Supreme Court denied review on February 20, 2025, and describes the dispute as one in which the State of Delaware claims a special interest in enforcing a charitable trust whose terms give first consideration to Delaware residents.
The Present Situation section of the same analysis is explicit about the state of the law the bill was addressing.
The common law ‘special interest’ exception to the general rule of standing to file an action to enforce a trust provision in a charitable trust has not been codified in the Trust Code, although it is alluded to in s. 736.0405(3), F.S. In a 2024 case, a district court of appeal noted that the special interest rule had not been changed by statute and stated that the Legislature could change or eliminate that common law rule by amending the Trust Code.
Florida Senate Bill Analysis, Committee on Rules, CS/CS/HB 1173, March 31, 2025.
And the analysis states the practical effect on the pending case in terms.
Should the Florida Attorney General act, the bill would prohibit the Attorney General of the State of Delaware from continuing to enjoy special interest standing in the trust action regarding the trust created by the will of Alfred I. duPont, which created the Nemours Foundation. The Nemours Foundation operates children’s hospitals and health care facilities in multiple states.
Florida Senate Bill Analysis, Committee on Rules, CS/CS/HB 1173, March 31, 2025, under Private Sector Impact.
We are reporting what the record says and stopping there. No analysis says the bill was passed in response to the decision, and we do not say it either. What is established is narrower and still substantial. The Legislature had the case in front of it, named the parties and the trust, and stated what the bill would do to that litigation.
Two decisions construe this section, and they point in opposite directions
Subsection (1) has been applied by the Fourth District, and subsection (3) by the First District ten years earlier. Both are worth knowing.
A charity won qualified beneficiary status over the family’s objection
Three sisters, the current distributees of an irrevocable trust, argued that several charities named to take after them were not qualified beneficiaries. The trial court agreed with the sisters. The Fourth District reversed, and the reasoning turns on a single idea in paragraph (b).
The lower court’s order contemplates the sequential termination of the daughters’ individual interests such that A’s interest passes to B and C; then B’s interest passes to C; then C’s interest passes to the charities. This interpretation is contrary to the plain language of the statute.
The statute contemplates the simultaneous termination of the interests of the distributees (“termination of the interests of other distributees or permissible distributees then receiving or eligible to receive distributions”). If the interests of the distributees of the trust were simultaneously terminated, all of the daughters’ interests would terminate and the charities would be the distributees.
Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. v. Melcer, 268 So. 3d 759 (Fla. 4th DCA 2019). The opinion carries the legend “Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.”
That is the practical test. You do not ask whether the charity would take if the current beneficiaries died one after another. You ask whether it would take if all their interests ended at once. Read sequentially, a charity behind several siblings is never next in line. Read simultaneously, it is.
And subsection (3) was read narrowly in 2014
The dispute over the duPont trust did not begin in 2024. Ten years earlier the same charitable trust, and the same question of another state’s attorney general, produced a decision in the First District, on appeal from the same Duval County circuit court. The court held the Delaware Attorney General was not an indispensable party, reasoning from the permissive verb in this subsection.
Florida’s trust statutes also permits the Florida Attorney General to intervene on the behalf of charitable trust beneficiaries. However, the Florida Attorney General is not considered an indispensable party with regard to a trust administered under Florida law.
It would defy logic to confer indispensable party status on the Delaware Attorney General where the Florida Attorney General has no such standing under Florida law.
Biden v. Lord, 147 So. 3d 632 (Fla. 1st DCA 2014), footnote 2. The opinion states that it was filed September 16, 2014, carries a not final legend, and drew a dissent. The subsection quoted there is today’s paragraph (3)(a).
So the sequence over eleven years runs like this. In 2014 another state’s attorney general lost, on reasoning that may means what it says and confers no indispensable status even on Florida’s own Attorney General. In 2024 another state’s attorney general won, on the common law special interest doctrine rather than on this section. In 2025 the Legislature added paragraph (3)(b), which makes the Florida Attorney General’s authority exclusive and says another state’s attorney general does not have standing.
One further point of context. The earlier proceedings were governed by former chapter 737, under which the state attorney for the circuit where a charitable trust was administered represented its beneficiaries. That office being a party is why the 2014 court found the Delaware interests already represented.
What this means if you are the one asking
If you are a charity named in a Florida charitable trust and the trustee is not accounting to you, work through subsection (1) first. Express designation and one of the three tests, measured today, is the whole of it.
If you were appointed to enforce an animal trust or a purpose trust, subsection (2) gives you the rights you need and they are the same rights a beneficiary would have.
If your interest in a charitable trust rests on a special interest rather than on being named, the ground moved in 2025 and you should be reading subsection (3)(b) and section 736.0405(3) together before doing anything else.