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Florida Statute 736.0706: How a Florida Trustee Gets Removed

Most families come to this section believing a trustee can be removed for being difficult. Florida gives four grounds, and difficult is not one of them.

Here is the whole section in plain English, what Florida’s appellate courts have actually removed a trustee for, and the one subsection that protects the money while the case runs.

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Quick Overview

Florida law lists four separate grounds for removing a trustee, and being difficult is not one of them. The ground that carries most real cases is the third, namely unfitness, unwillingness, or persistent failure to administer the trust effectively. A Florida appellate court affirmed a removal on that ground where the trustee had given no notice of acceptance, rendered no accountings at all, filed no tax returns, and made no distributions. Whether your trustee’s conduct reaches that line comes down to the record you can actually document, which the sections below walk through.

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Below we walk through what the statute says, who can use it, what courts have actually done with it, and what it costs to start. Jump to any section.

  1. What Section 736.0706 Says Three subsections, four grounds, and one sentence at the end that most families never read. The last one is the answer to “the money will be gone by trial.”
  2. Who Can Ask Beneficiaries are only one of the three people the statute names, and the court can act on its own. One appellate case shows the limit on that power.
  3. The Four Grounds, and Which One Usually Works Four doors, and Florida’s appellate courts have written about one and a half of them. Knowing which door is load bearing changes how the case gets built.
  4. What Persistent Failure Actually Looks Like Seven specific failures a court called persistent, itemized in a 2023 opinion. Hold your own trustee up against the list before you decide anything.
  5. When Removal Is Not the Answer A trustee who acted prudently and never took a fee kept her job despite an acrimonious family. The remedy for slow and rude is usually something else entirely.
  6. The Lever Most People Miss Subsection (3) lets a court protect the trust while the case is still running, and it works even if the trustee is never removed at all.
  7. What This Costs and How It Starts The first move is paperwork, not a lawsuit, and there is a deadline hiding in the appellate rules that catches families on both sides.

That’s the rule in one paragraph. What decides your situation is what your trustee did, what you can prove they did, and what the trust document itself says, which is where the sections below get specific.

What Section 736.0706 Says

By the time someone reads this section, the polite version has usually already been tried. The accountings never came. The calls stopped being returned. A sibling is sitting on a house, a brokerage account, and a set of answers nobody else can get to, and the question has narrowed to one thing. Can we get this person out?

The section that answers you is short, and it is more generous than people expect in one direction and stricter in another. It gives four separate grounds, so you do not have to prove fraud. It also ends with a sentence almost nobody quotes, which is the answer to the fear that keeps people up at night, that the money will be gone before a judge ever hears the case.

Fla. Stat. §736.0706, in full

736.0706 Removal of trustee.

  1. The settlor, a cotrustee, or a beneficiary may request the court to remove a trustee, or a trustee may be removed by the court on the court’s own initiative.
  2. The court may remove a trustee if:
    1. The trustee has committed a serious breach of trust;
    2. The lack of cooperation among cotrustees substantially impairs the administration of the trust;
    3. Due to the unfitness, unwillingness, or persistent failure of the trustee to administer the trust effectively, the court determines that removal of the trustee best serves the interests of the beneficiaries; or
    4. There has been a substantial change of circumstances or removal is requested by all of the qualified beneficiaries, the court finds that removal of the trustee best serves the interests of all of the beneficiaries and is not inconsistent with a material purpose of the trust, and a suitable cotrustee or successor trustee is available.
  3. Pending a final decision on a request to remove a trustee, or in lieu of or in addition to removing a trustee, the court may order such appropriate relief under s. 736.1001(2) as may be necessary to protect the trust property or the interests of the beneficiaries.

That is the entire section, quoted as it appears in the official Florida Statutes at Online Sunshine, §736.0706 (retrieved August 12, 2026). History: s. 7, ch. 2006-217.

Read it once more for structure, because the structure is the strategy. Subsection (1) is about who. Subsection (2) is about why, and the four paragraphs under it are independent of one another, so you need one, not all four. Subsection (3) is about when, and it is the only part of the section that operates before the case is over. This page takes them in that order. The section sits inside the broader Florida Trust Code, and it works alongside the duties we cover on our trust administration page.

Who Can Ask

Subsection (1) names three people who may ask a court to remove a trustee, and they are the settlor, a cotrustee, or a beneficiary. It then adds a fourth possibility, that the court may remove a trustee on its own initiative.

That opening list is worth slowing down on, because most people assume removal is a beneficiary’s remedy and stop there.

Now the limit on the court’s own initiative power, which is the one place a Florida appellate court has construed subsection (1). In Kountze v. Kountze, the Second District read subsections (1) and (2)(c) together.

“Section 736.0706(1), (2)(c), Florida Statutes (2010), provides that ‘a trustee may be removed by the court on the court’s own initiative ... if ... [d]ue to the unfitness, unwillingness, or persistent failure of the trustee to administer the trust effectively, the court determines that removal of the trustee best serves the interests of the beneficiaries.’ The statute therefore suggests that a factual finding must be made by the trial court as to the trustee’s unfitness, unwillingness, and persistent failure to administer the trust effectively.”

Kountze v. Kountze, 93 So. 3d 1164, 1165 (Fla. 2d DCA 2012).

In that case a trustee was removed as a sanction at the end of a discovery fight, and the appellate court reversed that part of the order.

“There is nothing in the record to put Edward on notice that removal as Trustee was a possible sanction. As such, Edward had no reason to be prepared to defend against such a sanction.”

Kountze, 93 So. 3d at 1165.

What that means for you, whichever chair you are sitting in. If you want a trustee removed, removal has to be pleaded and noticed as removal, and the court has to make findings tied to the words of the statute. A removal that arrives sideways, as a penalty for something else, is the kind that gets undone on appeal, and an undone removal costs a family a year it did not have. If you are the trustee, the flip side is that you are entitled to know removal is on the table and to prepare a defense to it.

The Four Grounds, and Which One Usually Works

Four paragraphs, four independent doors. Here they are in plain English, along with an honest account of how much law sits behind each one, because that is the part nobody tells you and it changes how a case gets built.

(a) A serious breach of trust. This is the one everybody reaches for, and it is the one with the least behind it. No Florida appellate decision we located defines what makes a breach of trust serious. Searching Florida’s appellate opinions for that exact phrase turns up only a handful of results, and the single trust case among them carries the phrase inside a quoted trial court order rather than in the appellate court’s own reasoning. So the word that sounds strongest in the statute is the word with no published yardstick attached to it.

(b) Cotrustee deadlock. Removal is available where the lack of cooperation among cotrustees substantially impairs the administration of the trust. Notice what it does not require. Nobody has to be the villain. Two honest cotrustees who cannot agree can substantially impair a trust just as effectively as one bad actor. We located no Florida appellate decision construing this paragraph, so its outer edges have not been drawn.

(c) Unfitness, unwillingness, or persistent failure to administer the trust effectively. This is the workhorse, and it is the ground that carries most real removal cases in Florida. It has two appellate decisions behind it, one affirming a removal and one reversing the way a removal was obtained. Read the paragraph carefully and you will see why it works. It does not ask a judge to grade anyone’s character. It asks whether the job is being done, which is a question you answer with documents. The next section is what that looks like in practice.

(d) Substantial change of circumstances, or a unanimous request. This is the consensus door, and it comes with conditions people miss. Either there has been a substantial change of circumstances or removal is requested by all of the qualified beneficiaries. Then the court must still find that removal serves the interests of all of the beneficiaries and is not inconsistent with a material purpose of the trust. And then the gate. A suitable cotrustee or successor trustee must be available. A family that agrees unanimously but has nobody willing and able to take the job has not finished its homework. Working out who the successor would be is often the first practical step, not the last. We located no Florida appellate decision construing this paragraph either.

Put the map together and it looks like this. The statute names four doors. Florida’s appellate courts have written about one and a half of them. That is not a reason to despair, it is a reason to build the case where the law actually lives.

What Persistent Failure Actually Looks Like

In December 2023 the Third District decided a Miami-Dade case that is the fullest Florida appellate application of the persistent failure ground. Two sisters. A father who died in 2019 leaving a will and a revocable trust. One sister named both personal representative of the estate and trustee of the trust. Her defense on appeal was that she had relied on the lawyer and the accountant her father had used for years. The removal was affirmed anyway.

Here is the appellate court describing what the trial court found.

“In similar fashion, the trial court found that Appellant ‘is in breach of trust due to her violations of various duties [she], as Trustee, owes to the beneficiaries of the Trust,’ and, because she ‘persistently failed to administer the Trust effectively,’ her removal as trustee ‘best serves the interests of the beneficiaries.’”

Gnaegy v. Morris, No. 3D22-2065 (Fla. 3d DCA Dec. 13, 2023) (slip op. at 10).

The opinion then itemizes the reasons, and that list is the most useful paragraph in Florida law on this section, because it converts an abstract standard into something a family can check. Here it is in the court’s own words.

“Reasons for her removal as Trustee of the Revocable Trust include failure to: provide notice of acceptance of the Trust at any time, in violation of section 736.0813(a) [sic], Florida Statutes (2022); file any tax returns for the Trust, thereby subjecting the Trust to potential penalties and interest; render any Trust accountings whatsoever in violation of section 736.0813(d) [sic], Florida Statutes (2022); provide the Trust’s beneficiaries with relevant information about the assets and liabilities of the Trust and the particulars relating to administration in violation of section 736.0813(e) [sic], Florida Statutes (2022); distribute Trust income or principal to the Trust’s beneficiaries in violation of section 736.08147, Florida Statutes (2022); invest Trust assets pursuant to the prudent investor rule set forth in section 518.11, Florida Statutes (2022); administer the Trust in the interests of the beneficiaries and abide by the express terms of the Trust in administering the Trust and distributing the assets outright to the beneficiaries.”

Gnaegy v. Morris, No. 3D22-2065 (Fla. 3d DCA Dec. 13, 2023) (slip op. at 10). The bracketed sic marks the opinion’s own paragraph references. Those duties are codified at Fla. Stat. §736.0813(1)(a), (1)(d), and (1)(e).

In plain English, as trustee of that revocable trust she failed to do all of the following.

Read that list again as a checklist against your own situation, and notice the shape of it. Almost every item is a duty to inform and account. That is the practical lesson buried in the case. Removal under paragraph (2)(c) is proved with the paper the trustee never produced. Which means the first move in a removal case is almost never the removal petition. It is establishing, in writing, what was requested and what never arrived.

The appellate court then explained why it left the trial judge’s decision alone.

“We find ample competent, substantial evidence in the record to support the trial court’s determinations, and hold the trial court acted within its discretion in removing Appellant as Personal Representative of the Estate and as Trustee of the Trust.”

Gnaegy, slip op. at 11.

“We find the trial court did not abuse its discretion in removing Appellant as personal representative of the Estate and as trustee of the Trust and affirm that portion of the trial court’s order.”

Gnaegy, slip op. at 2.

Two honest cautions about using this case as a mirror. First, the words abuse of discretion are doing quiet work. A removal decision is reviewed for abuse of discretion, which means the trial judge has real room and the case is won or lost on the record built in the trial court rather than on an appeal. Second, the person in that case wore two hats, and the grounds for removing a personal representative come from a different statute in the probate code. Do not blend the two lists. The seven items above are the trustee side.

And the necessary line under all of it. This is a published decision in another family’s case, not a matter handled by this firm, and it is not a prediction about yours. It shows what one court called persistent failure on one record. Whether your facts reach that line is what a consult is for.

Measured your trustee against the list and recognized them?

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When Removal Is Not the Answer

Everything above is the winning side. Here is the other one, and we put it on the page on purpose, because a page that only shows removals granted would set families up to spend money on a case that was never there.

In 2021 the Third District affirmed a trial court that refused to remove a trustee. The petitioner had pleaded two of the four grounds, serious breach of trust and persistent failure to administer the trust effectively. The appellate court found nothing in the record supporting a conflict of interest.

“There is no indication in the record of conflict of interest as a result of Anita’s several roles within the family businesses; the record indicates that Anita has not taken any salary or remuneration for her work as Trustee.”

Giller v. Grossman, 327 So. 3d 391 (Fla. 3d DCA 2021) (slip op. at 9 to 10).

The trial court’s own findings, which the Third District reproduced in its opinion, are worth reading in full because they describe the trustee families almost never manage to remove.

“Section 736.0706(1)(a) [sic], Fla. Stat. provides that a trustee may be removed under four circumstances. The Petitioner alleged two grounds in support of the Trustee’s removal: ‘the trustee has committed a serious breach of trust’ and ‘[d]ue to the unfitness, unwillingness, or persistent failure of the trustee to administer the trust effectively, the court determines that removal of the trustee best serves the interests of the beneficiaries.’”

“The Court finds that there is no evidentiary support for Petitioner’s allegations of breach of trust. Moreover, the Court finds that Anita Grossman acted prudently, in conformity with her duties of care as Trustee under the Florida Trust Code and that she has taken great efforts to safeguard the assets of the Subject Trusts and navigate an acrimonious situation for the benefit of all the beneficiaries. Ms. Grossman has never paid herself or taken a fee for her administration of the Subject Trusts despite what is clearly a time consuming and difficult situation.”

Giller, slip op. at 10 (the trial court’s order, quoted in the appellate opinion). The Third District added: “We find no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s conclusion.” Giller, slip op. at 10. The bracketed sic marks the order’s own citation. The four removal grounds are set out in subsection (2) of the statute, and subsection (1) has no paragraph (a).

Sit with the phrase acrimonious situation. The family in that case was at war. The trustee still kept her job, because she was doing it, and because she had never paid herself. So the honest rule, stated plainly.

That does not mean you are without a remedy. It usually means the remedy is a different one. A trustee who has not accounted can be compelled to account, and the accounting itself often answers the question that started the fight, sometimes in the trustee’s favor and sometimes not. What that accounting must contain, and the clocks that come with it, are set out in our guide to Florida Statute 736.0813. A trustee who caused a loss can face a claim for the loss without being removed at all. Those routes, and how they run in practice, are mapped on our Florida trust litigation page. And if the concern is really about a trust that has just become irrevocable and a trustee who has not yet done the first things right, start with Florida trust administration, because plenty of what looks like misconduct in month two is a trustee who has never done this before.

One more boundary. If you are trying to get information about a trust while the person who created it is still alive, removal is not your route and neither is a records demand. See Fla. Stat. 736.0603. And if what you actually want is to challenge whether the trust is valid at all, that is a different claim on a much shorter clock. See Fla. Stat. 736.0604.

The Lever Most People Miss

Here is the fear that brings people in at eleven at night. Not that they will lose. That they will win in eighteen months and find the account empty.

Subsection (3) is the Legislature’s answer to that fear, and almost nobody outside the trust bar knows it is there. Pending a final decision on a request to remove a trustee, or in lieu of or in addition to removing a trustee, the court may order such appropriate relief under section 736.1001(2) as may be necessary to protect the trust property or the interests of the beneficiaries.

Three things in that sentence do real work.

It starts with the words “Pending a final decision”. The protection is available while the case is still running. You do not have to reach the end of the road to ask a court to keep the property where it is.

Then the phrase “in lieu of”. A court can order protective relief without removing the trustee at all. That reframes the whole conversation for a family that is not sure it wants a scorched earth fight with a sibling. Sometimes the goal is not to end anyone’s role. It is to stop a specific thing from happening to a specific asset while the adults sort it out.

And it ends by tying the relief to what is “necessary to protect the trust property or the interests of the beneficiaries”. The relief is tied to protection, which means it is tied to a showing. This is not a form you file. It is a request supported by a record, which is one more reason the documents matter more than the anger.

Be aware of the honest limit here too, because it is the same shape as the gaps above. We located no Florida appellate decision construing subsection (3). The section points to the remedies provision of the Trust Code, and what a court will order in a given case depends on that provision and on the facts in front of it. Nobody can tell you from a web page what relief a judge would grant. What we can tell you is that the request exists, that it is available early, and that families who do not know about it tend to wait until the thing they feared has already happened.

What This Costs and How It Starts

The first move is smaller than people expect, and it is paperwork rather than a lawsuit.

Start with the records and the accounting. Look again at the seven items in the 2023 case. Nearly all of them are failures to inform and account, which means the case that removes a trustee is built out of a request for documents and the trustee’s response to it. That first step costs a fraction of a contested hearing, it is worth doing even if you never file anything, and it frequently changes the picture entirely. Trustees who have been ignoring a family for a year often start producing when a lawyer asks in writing. Sometimes what arrives resolves the worry. Sometimes what arrives is the case.

What it costs. A trust dispute is quoted after we have read the documents, because the work depends on what actually happened and how the other side responds. We do not post a flat fee for litigation and we will not invent one on the phone. Flat fees for planning work, wills, trusts, deeds, are posted on our pricing page, and government costs such as filing and recording fees are additional and passed through at cost. The consult is a free 30 minutes, and there is no charge for hearing that we do not think you have a case, which is an answer we give regularly.

Most of these end without a trial. Trustees who see a documented record of what they failed to do often resign, agree to a successor, or settle the accounting rather than testify about it. That is not a promise about your matter, and nobody can make you one. It is a reason to build the record early, because the record is what produces the resolution.

Watch the appellate clock if an order has already been entered. An order removing or refusing to remove a fiduciary is treated as final and appealable right away. As the Third District put it in the 2023 case, “This portion of the order did ‘finally determine a right or obligation of an interested person’ by removing Appellant as a fiduciary.” The court reached that under the appellate rule covering orders that remove or refuse to remove a fiduciary. You do not wait for the rest of the case to finish. If a judge has ruled, the calendar is already running and it is short.

Nobody can tell you from a web page whether your trustee can be removed. What we can do is read the trust, put the events in order, tell you which of the four grounds your facts actually touch, and tell you plainly when the answer is that the remedy is an accounting rather than a removal. Book a free consult →

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I Remove a Trustee for Not Communicating?

Silence by itself is a weak case. Silence that is part of a pattern is a different matter. Section 736.0706(2)(c) lets a court remove a trustee for unfitness, unwillingness, or persistent failure to administer the trust effectively, and in the 2023 case discussed on this page the trustee who was removed had never given notice of accepting the trust, never rendered an accounting, never filed a tax return for the trust, and never distributed anything. Those are documentable failures of specific duties, which is what a court can act on. Being ignored is painful, but the case gets built out of the missing documents rather than the unanswered calls.

What Counts as a Serious Breach of Trust?

Honestly, nobody in Florida has said. Paragraph (2)(a) allows removal when the trustee has committed a serious breach of trust, and no Florida appellate decision we located defines what makes a breach serious. The phrase turns up in only a handful of Florida appellate opinions, and in the one trust case among them it appears inside a quoted trial court order rather than in the appellate court’s own analysis. That gap is exactly why experienced counsel build removal cases on the paper trail of missed notices and missed accountings under paragraph (2)(c) instead of arguing about an adjective no court has defined.

Who Can Petition to Remove a Trustee?

Subsection (1) names three people (the settlor, a cotrustee, or a beneficiary). It also lets the court remove a trustee on its own initiative. Two practical points follow. A cotrustee who is being frozen out by the other cotrustee does not have to wait for a beneficiary to act, and a settlor of a trust that is still revocable has standing in their own right. Whether you fit one of those categories, and whether you are a qualified beneficiary of the particular trust, is answered from the trust document, which is the first thing we read at a consult.

Can the Court Protect the Trust While the Case Runs?

That is what subsection (3) is for, and it is the part most families never hear about. Pending a final decision on a request to remove a trustee, or in lieu of or in addition to removing a trustee, the court may order such appropriate relief under section 736.1001(2) as may be necessary to protect the trust property or the interests of the beneficiaries. Notice the phrase in lieu of. A court can protect the property without removing anyone. We located no Florida appellate decision construing subsection (3), so what a court will order is a question of the record you put in front of it, not a formula.

Does the Trustee Pay My Legal Fees?

Section 736.0706 says nothing at all about attorney fees. Not who pays them, not when, not out of what. Fee questions in a Florida trust dispute come from other provisions and from the specific posture of the case, and anyone who tells you from a web page who will pay your fees is guessing. It is a fair question and a common one, so bring it up in the consult and we will tell you what we can say and what we cannot, before you spend anything.

What if All the Beneficiaries Agree?

That is paragraph (2)(d), and it has a condition families routinely miss. The paragraph applies where there has been a substantial change of circumstances or removal is requested by all of the qualified beneficiaries, and it still requires the court to find that removal serves the interests of all of the beneficiaries and is not inconsistent with a material purpose of the trust, and that a suitable cotrustee or successor trustee is available. That last item is the gate. A unanimous family with nobody willing and able to take the job is not a case that is ready to file. Figuring out who the successor would be is often the first real work.

Is a Removal Order Appealable?

Yes, and right away. In the 2023 Third District case discussed above, the court explained that the portion of the order removing the fiduciary finally determined a right or obligation of an interested person, so it was reviewable under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.170(b)(6), which covers orders that remove or refuse to remove a fiduciary. You do not wait for the rest of the case to end. That cuts both ways. A trustee who was removed has an appellate deadline running, and a family whose removal petition was denied has one too. If an order has been entered, treat the date on it as urgent.

Common Situations

Three years and not one piece of paper. A son in Broward learns that his stepmother, the successor trustee of his father’s trust, has never sent him a notice, never sent an accounting, and never answered a written request for a list of the assets. He assumes he needs proof that she stole something. He may not. The 2023 case above turned on failures exactly like his, and the file that proves them is mostly the file of things that never arrived. The first thing we would do is put the requests in writing so that the silence becomes a record instead of a memory.

The sibling who is slow, not crooked. Two sisters in Naples are eighteen months into administering their mother’s trust. One handles everything, resents it, answers texts in a week, and has not produced an accounting. The other is ready to file for removal. Honestly read, this is closer to the case where removal was denied than the case where it was granted, and the realistic remedy is a compelled accounting, not the end of a relationship. We would tell her that, and we would tell her what to do if the accounting comes back wrong.

The house that is about to be sold. A trustee has listed the family home, is quoting a price the beneficiaries think is far under market, and the closing is scheduled inside of a month. The removal question will take longer than the closing will. Subsection (3) exists for exactly this gap, since it lets a court be asked to protect trust property while the removal question is still open, and it can be asked for without seeking anyone’s removal at all. What a court would do with that request depends entirely on the record, which is why the call happens now and not after the deed records.

Sources of Law

Updated on August 12, 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. Whether section 736.0706 reaches your trustee depends on your specific documents, facts, and record, which we review at a free consult. Please do not send confidential details until we have connected.

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