The same two questions as everywhere else
Florida answers trustee liability questions the same way throughout the Code. Contracts turn on how the trustee signed, torts turn on personal fault. Section 736.1013 states the general rule. This section applies it to one situation, a trustee holding a general partnership interest, which needed its own provision because a general partner is ordinarily liable for everything the partnership does.
Unless personal liability is imposed in the contract, a trustee who holds an interest as a general partner in a general or limited partnership is not personally liable on a contract entered into by the partnership after the trust’s acquisition of the interest if the fiduciary capacity was disclosed in the contract or in a statement previously filed pursuant to a Uniform Partnership Act or Uniform Limited Partnership Act.
Section 736.1015(1), Florida Statutes.
Three conditions, and each can fail independently. Personal liability must not be imposed in the contract, which a well advised counterparty will try to do. The fiduciary capacity must have been disclosed, either in the contract itself or in a previously filed partnership statement, so a public filing can do the work for every later contract. And the contract must have been entered into after the trust acquired the interest.
That last one is easy to miss and it is a real gap. A partnership’s existing contracts do not come within the protection. A trust that takes on a general partnership interest inherits exposure on everything already signed.
The tort rule
A trustee who holds an interest as a general partner is not personally liable for torts committed by the partnership or for obligations arising from ownership or control of the interest unless the trustee is personally at fault.
Section 736.1015(2), Florida Statutes.
Word for word the structure of section 736.1013(2), and it carries the same warning. This is a condition, not an immunity. Where personal fault is genuinely in dispute, the subsection does not resolve anything; it states what the claimant must prove. A federal judge in Florida made exactly that point about the equivalent language in the general provision, denying a trustee’s summary judgment motion that had been built on it.
Subsection (3), and it is the reason to read this page
If the trustee of a revocable trust holds an interest as a general partner, the settlor is personally liable for contracts and other obligations of the partnership as if the settlor were a general partner.
Section 736.1015(3), Florida Statutes.
Read that twice. It is the opposite of what most people expect a trust to do.
Transferring a general partnership interest into a revocable trust does not put a layer between the owner and the partnership’s obligations. The statute reaches through and makes the settlor personally liable as if they were the general partner, for contracts and for other obligations.
The logic is consistent with how Florida treats revocable trusts generally. The settlor can revoke at will, so the property is realistically still theirs, and the same reasoning underlies section 736.0505 on creditors and section 736.1014 on claims after death. A revocable trust is a probate avoidance device, not a liability shield.
The practical point. If asset protection is the reason for moving a general partnership interest, a revocable trust does not achieve it, and this section says so in terms. Whether some other structure does is a different question and depends on facts well beyond this statute.
No Florida court has cited this section
A search returns no citing documents at any precedential status in any court we searched.
So several things are untested. What disclosure suffices under subsection (1), and whether a filing that names a trustee without identifying the capacity is enough. How subsection (3) interacts with a partnership agreement that purports to limit a partner’s exposure. And whether subsection (3) survives the settlor’s death, when the trust ceases to be revocable.
We report the nil result as our own review rather than as a certainty.