Two sentences, pulling in opposite directions
Unless otherwise doing business in this state, local qualification by a foreign trustee is not required for the trustee to receive distribution from a local estate. Nothing in this chapter shall affect the provisions of s. 660.41.
Section 736.0112, Florida Statutes. Enacted in 2006 and never amended.
The first sentence is a convenience provision. Someone dies in Florida leaving a gift to a trust administered in another state, and the trustee of that trust needs to receive it. Without this, an argument could be made that the trustee has to qualify in Florida first. The statute removes it.
The second sentence is where the caution lives.
How narrow the safe harbour is
Read the qualifiers. Unless otherwise doing business in this state. A foreign trustee already doing business in Florida does not get the benefit of the sentence, and what counts as doing business is not defined here.
To receive distribution from a local estate. That is the only act covered. The section does not say a foreign trustee may administer a trust in Florida, hold Florida property, or act as a fiduciary here generally. It says they may take the distribution.
If the question is where a trust is administered and what follows from that, the section to read is section 736.0108, which fixes the principal place of administration and drives both venue and jurisdiction.
The sentence that sends you elsewhere
The second sentence preserves section 660.41, which is not in the Trust Code at all. It sits in the banking chapter, and it governs who may act as a fiduciary in Florida.
That structure matters when you are researching. A person reading chapter 736 to find out whether an out of state institution can serve as trustee of a Florida trust will find this sentence and nothing else, because the answer was never in this chapter. The Trust Code disclaims any effect on it.
It is the same pattern as section 736.0901, which sends every investment question to chapter 518. The Trust Code is repeatedly a signpost rather than a source.
No decision cites this section, and the search result is not what it looks like
A search returns three documents. Two of them predate the Trust Code, from 1938 and 1994, so neither can be citing it.
The third is a 2014 Eleventh Circuit capital habeas appeal. We read the whole opinion, some thirty three thousand characters. The section number does not appear in it. The digits 736 occur exactly once, inside a citation.
see Parker v. Dugger, 498 U.S. 308, 314, 111 S.Ct. 731, 736, 112 L.Ed.2d 812 (1991)
A parenthetical citation in the 2014 opinion. The section number was manufactured from it.
The 736 is a page number in the Supreme Court Reporter. The 112 immediately after it is the volume number of the next reporter in the string. Put them together and you have 736.0112, which is how a death penalty appeal ended up in a search for a trust statute.
This is the third time we have found this exact pattern, and the second where the manufactured number is visible in the source text. It is worth stating as a research rule. When a search for a chapter 736 section returns a criminal or habeas case, look for a reporter page number before assuming anything.
So this section has no citing decision at all. We report that as our own review rather than as a certainty.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does an out of state trustee have to qualify in Florida?
Not merely to receive a distribution from a Florida estate. Section 736.0112 provides that, unless otherwise doing business in this state, local qualification by a foreign trustee is not required for the trustee to receive distribution from a local estate.
What are the limits on that?
Two, and both are in the sentence. The trustee must not otherwise be doing business in Florida, and the safe harbour covers receiving a distribution from a local estate rather than administering a trust here.
What is section 660.41 and why does it matter?
It is a banking statute restricting who may act as a fiduciary in Florida. This section says nothing in chapter 736 affects it, so the real constraints on an out of state corporate fiduciary are found outside the Trust Code.
Can a foreign bank or trust company serve as trustee of a Florida trust?
That question is answered by section 660.41 and related banking law, not by this section. This section only removes a qualification requirement for receiving a distribution.
Has a Florida court interpreted this section?
No. Two search results predate the Trust Code, and the third does not contain the section number at all.
Common Situations
A Florida estate leaves money to an out of state trust. The trustee need not qualify locally to receive it.
The trustee already does business in Florida. The safe harbour does not apply on its own terms.
An out of state institution wants to serve as trustee. That is a section 660.41 question, not a Trust Code one.
You found a 2014 federal case in a search. Check whether the section number is actually in it.
Sources of Law
- Section 736.0112, Florida Statutes (2025). Enacted by s. 1, ch. 2006-217 and never amended.
- Section 660.41, Florida Statutes, expressly preserved by the second sentence.
- Section 736.0108, Florida Statutes, on the principal place of administration.
- Reading note: of three documents returned by a search for this section number, two were decided before the Florida Trust Code took effect, and the third is an Eleventh Circuit decision we read in full which does not contain the section number.
- Our review searched the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida District Courts of Appeal, the Florida federal district courts, the Florida bankruptcy courts and the Eleventh Circuit on August 16, 2026, requesting every precedential status rather than the default view. We report a nil result as our own review and not as a certainty, and we confirm that a section number actually appears in a decision before relying on it, having now found three search results for statutes whose numbers appear nowhere in the opinions returned.
- Decisions discussed here are published opinions in other parties’ cases. They are not matters handled by this firm and they predict nothing about any reader’s case. No commercial citator pass has been run on this research.
Updated on August 16, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law and published court decisions, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Reading this page does not make us your lawyers. Please do not send confidential details until we have connected.
