A complaint, and the Rules of Civil Procedure
Except as provided in subsections (5), (6), and (7) and s. 736.0206, judicial proceedings concerning trusts shall be commenced by filing a complaint and shall be governed by the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure.
Section 736.0201(1), Florida Statutes.
That is a mandate rather than a preference, and courts have treated it as one. Two decisions make the point from different directions.
In 2023 the Fifth District quashed an order appointing a trustee. The moving party had filed a petition, without a summons, and had not served an interested contingent beneficiary. The court quoted the subsection and held the proceeding had never properly begun. It also rejected the argument that actual notice was enough, which it is not under Florida law.
In 2024 the Fourth District affirmed the refusal of emergency relief where a beneficiary had filed an emergency petition inside the probate case instead of commencing a trust action by complaint with service on the cotrustees. The court declined to reach any of the merits.
The exceptions are narrow. Subsection (5) allows a proceeding construing a testamentary trust to be filed in the probate proceeding for the testator’s estate, under the Probate Rules. Subsection (7) does the same for a proceeding to determine the homestead status of trust real property, where the settlor was treated as owner under section 732.4015. Subsection (6) is about attorney fee practice, below. And section 736.0206 covers proceedings reviewing the employment of agents and the compensation of trustees.
One footnote for anyone comparing older opinions. A 2018 decision quotes this subsection as excepting "subsections (5) and (6)". The current text reads "(5), (6), and (7)". Subsection (7) was added in 2021, so the number of exceptions a case recites tells you roughly when it was written.
A trust is not under standing supervision
A trust is not subject to continuing judicial supervision unless ordered by the court.
Section 736.0201(3), Florida Statutes.
This is the sentence that defines how Florida trusts actually run. Nobody is watching. There is no annual filing to a judge, no routine review, no court file sitting open. That is why the duties in Part VIII and the accounting requirements in section 736.08135 carry so much weight. They are the supervision.
Where a court has ordered continuing supervision, that does not change the procedural rules. In 2018 the Second District considered a trial court that had retained jurisdiction over a trust and then refused to allow a plaintiff to take a voluntary dismissal.
We reject the notion that subsection (3) somehow renders inapplicable the legislature’s mandate that the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure “shall” apply in this context.
Subsection (3) merely provides the trial court the discretion to continue supervision of a trust. It does not, and cannot, nullify subsection (1)’s mandate as to the applicability of the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure.
It would render subsection (1), where the legislature explicitly identifies the three exceptions, wholly superfluous if we interpret subsection (3) in isolation, as the daughters suggest.
Baden v. Baden, 260 So. 3d 1108 (Fla. 2d DCA 2018).
Prohibition was granted and the order quashed. The court also held that "custody of the court" for the purposes of the voluntary dismissal rule means actual custody, such as money paid into the court registry, and not merely trust assets subject to a supervisory order.
What a court can be asked to do
Subsection (4) is the menu, and it is worth reading before deciding what to file. A judicial proceeding involving a trust may relate to its validity, administration or distribution, including proceedings to determine the validity of all or part of a trust; appoint or remove a trustee; review trustees’ fees; review and settle interim or final accounts; obtain a declaration of rights; and determine any other matters involving trustees and beneficiaries.
Paragraph (4)(e) is the widest, and covers ascertaining beneficiaries, determining any question arising in the administration or distribution of a trust including questions of construction, instructing trustees, and determining the existence or nonexistence of any immunity, power, privilege, duty or right. A trustee who genuinely does not know what to do can ask.
The carve-out in the fee rule
Subsection (6) applies Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.525 to trust proceedings, and then removes two things from what counts as taxation of costs or attorney fees, even where the payment is for services rendered in the proceeding.
The first is a trustee’s payment of compensation or reimbursement to persons it employed, out of trust assets. The second is a court directing which part of the trust pays fees or costs, unless that determination is made under section 736.1004 in an action for breach of fiduciary duty or challenging the exercise of a trustee’s powers.
That exception to the exception matters. In an ordinary administration dispute a direction about which part of the trust bears fees sits outside rule 1.525’s timing requirements. In a breach of fiduciary duty action it does not.
A note on the research
A search for this section returns eighteen documents, which is the largest number for any section we have annotated in this chapter. We read the four that engage the section substantively, and we are telling you that rather than implying we read all eighteen.
Several of the remainder are the same decision recorded more than once. The 2018 Second District case above exists in the database as three separate records, one being the court’s own slip opinion and two being the published reporter text, with identical panels, dates, docket number and disposition. Others in the list are Supreme Court orders amending the probate rules, where a section number appears in a table of statutory references rather than in any discussion.