Eight ways to end up in a Florida court
Subsection (2)(a) is a long arm provision written specifically for trusts. It applies to a trustee, a beneficiary, or any other person, whether or not a citizen or resident of this state, who personally or through an agent does any of the listed acts.
1. Accepts trusteeship of a trust having its principal place of administration in this state at the time of acceptance.
2. Moves the principal place of administration of a trust to this state.
3. Serves as trustee of a trust created by a settlor who was a resident of this state at the time of creation of the trust or serves as trustee of a trust having its principal place of administration in this state.
4. Accepts or exercises a delegation of powers or duties from the trustee of a trust having its principal place of administration in this state.
5. Commits a breach of trust in this state, or commits a breach of trust with respect to a trust having its principal place of administration in this state at the time of the breach.
6. Accepts compensation from a trust having its principal place of administration in this state.
7. Performs any act or service for a trust having its principal place of administration in this state.
8. Accepts a distribution from a trust having its principal place of administration in this state with respect to any matter involving the distribution.
Section 736.0202(2)(a), Florida Statutes.
Three of these deserve a second look.
Number 3 reaches a trustee who serves a trust created by a settlor who was a Florida resident at the time of creation, wherever that trustee is and wherever the trust is now administered. A professional trustee in another state who takes on an old Florida family trust has done the act described.
Number 7 is remarkably broad on its face, covering any act or service for a trust administered in Florida.
Number 8 is the one nobody expects. Accepting a distribution from a Florida administered trust submits the recipient to Florida jurisdiction as to any matter involving that distribution. A beneficiary living elsewhere who has never dealt with Florida, and who simply banked a payment, is within it.
Most of the list is anchored to the trust having its principal place of administration in Florida, which is not an intuitive concept and is defined in section 736.0108. Working out whether the statute applies usually starts there.
The in rem rule, and what it does not reach
Subsection (1) supplies a separate and narrower base. Any beneficiary of a trust having its principal place of administration in Florida is subject to the jurisdiction of Florida courts to the extent of the beneficiary’s interest in the trust.
That reaches the interest rather than the person. It lets a Florida court determine what a beneficiary takes without asserting power over them generally, which is why an out of state beneficiary can be bound by a construction proceeding without becoming answerable personally.
The constitutional ceiling, and why every case is about it
Paragraph (2)(b) provides that a Florida court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a trustee, beneficiary or other person, whether found within or outside the state, to the maximum extent permitted by the State Constitution or the Federal Constitution.
So the statute deliberately runs to the constitutional limit, which means the statute is almost never the battleground. Satisfying one of the eight acts gets a claimant past the statutory gate and straight into a due process argument about minimum contacts.
That is exactly how it played out in the Fourth District in April 2026. A Nevada trust company was sued in Florida, and it conceded that the complaint alleged a statutory basis under paragraph 3, because the settlor had been a Florida resident when the trust was created. The court still ordered dismissal. Accepting a successor co-trusteeship of a trust created by a Florida resident, holding a Florida choice of law clause, and sending routine account communications to a co-trustee who later moved to Florida did not amount to purposeful availment. The opinion is recent, carries a not final legend and has no reporter citation yet.
The other lesson comes from a 2024 Fourth District decision about capacity. A Michigan resident had sued in Florida as co-trustee, and the trial court ordered him to disgorge $100,000 personally. Reversed. Submitting to jurisdiction in a representative capacity does not submit you individually, and disgorgement is a personal liability remedy requiring personal service on the individual. The court expressly left open whether long arm jurisdiction would exist over him individually if a separate suit were brought, pointing to this section and the two step test in Venetian Salami.
Four decisions, and not one construes the statute
This is the finding worth stating plainly. Our review located four Florida decisions citing this section, and none of them interprets any of the eight acts.
One is a bare citation in a string with the general long arm statute, supporting a conclusion already stated. One records a concession and decides the case on due process. One reserves the question for remand. And in the fourth the section appears three citation layers deep, inside a parenthetical quoted from a 2001 decision, inside a citation to a 2020 decision, in a standard of review paragraph, updating a pre-Code statute number in a passage about trustee removal rather than jurisdiction. We are not relying on that last one at all, and we note that the editorial update it contains does not sit easily with the rest of this area.
So a practitioner arguing about whether act number 7 or number 8 is satisfied on particular facts has the statutory text and nothing else. Whether accepting a single distribution is enough, what performing an act or service means, and whether these bases survive a challenge on their own terms are all undecided in Florida.