One sentence you should read twice
Part III of the Florida Trust Code is short, almost unknown, and capable of deciding your rights without you being in the room. This section explains what it does.
Actions taken by a person who represents the interests of another person under this part are binding on the person whose interests are represented to the same extent as if the actions had been taken by the person whose interests are represented.
Section 736.0301(2), Florida Statutes.
That is not a presumption and it is not a default that can be argued around after the fact. If a person could represent you under Part III, and they acted, you acted.
The companion rule does the same thing for information.
Notice, information, accountings, or reports given to a person who may represent and bind another person under this part may serve as a substitute for and have the same effect as notice, information, accountings, or reports given directly to the other person.
Section 736.0301(1), Florida Statutes.
Read that alongside section 736.1008, where an accounting delivered with a limitation notice starts a six month clock, and the significance becomes concrete. An accounting delivered to your representative can start your clock.
Why this exists at all
Trusts routinely have beneficiaries who cannot speak for themselves, including children, people who have lost capacity, people not yet born, and people nobody can find. Without a mechanism for representation, nothing involving those interests could ever be settled, because there would be no one whose agreement counted.
So the Code creates one, and then spends four more sections limiting it. Who may represent whom is set out in section 736.0302 for holders of a power of appointment, section 736.0303 for fiduciaries and parents, and section 736.0304 for a person with a substantially identical interest. If none of those fit, section 736.0305 lets a court appoint someone.
Almost every one of those routes is conditioned on there being no conflict of interest. That is the protection, and it is where a challenge to a representation would start.
The settlor who has lost capacity
Subsection (3) covers a situation families meet often.
Except as otherwise provided in s. 736.0602, a person under this part who represents a settlor lacking capacity may receive notice and give a binding consent on the settlor’s behalf.
Section 736.0301(3), Florida Statutes.
Note the carve out. Section 736.0602 deals with revocable trusts, where the settlor’s own rights displace the beneficiaries’ while the settlor is alive. The interaction between the two is exactly the kind of question a court would resolve, and no court has.
A provision written for trustees
Subsection (4) says a trustee is not liable for giving notice, information, accountings or reports to a beneficiary who is represented by another person, and that nothing in the Part prohibits giving those things to the person represented as well.
The practical advice that falls out of it is simple. If you are a trustee, notify both. The statute expressly permits it, it costs nothing, and it removes an argument.
No Florida court has construed this section
A search for this section number returns nothing at all. Not a passing citation, not a string cite, not an index entry. The same is true of three of the four sections that follow it.
That is a striking result for a Part that determines whose consent counts. It means the open questions are genuinely open, including how a conflict of interest is proved, what happens to a settlement when a representative turns out to have been conflicted, and whether a person bound by a representative can attack the result later.
We report it as our own review rather than as a certainty, but four consecutive zeros across one Part is itself the finding.