A reciprocal duty, on one test
Split a trustee’s job in two and each half needs things the other half knows. This section supplies that, symmetrically.
Subject to s. 736.1411 ... a trustee shall provide information to a trust director to the extent the information is reasonably related to the powers or duties of the trust director.
Section 736.141(1), Florida Statutes. The omitted words are a cross-reference gloss the Part repeats throughout.
Subsection (2) says the same in reverse, from director to trustee or to another director.
The test is identical both ways, reasonably related to the powers or duties of the person receiving it. So the scope of what you must hand over is measured by what the other person’s job requires, not by what they ask for and not by what you think is relevant.
That has a practical edge. A trustee holding custody of assets must give an investment director what the investment role needs. It does not have to open the whole file, and a director with a narrow power cannot use this section to obtain the trust’s entire administration.
Reliance is protected, with the same floor as everywhere else
A trustee that acts in reliance on information provided by a trust director is not liable for a breach of trust to the extent the breach resulted from the reliance, unless by so acting the trustee engages in willful misconduct.
Section 736.141(3), Florida Statutes. Subsection (4) protects a trust director in the same terms.
Willful misconduct again, the standard that runs through section 736.1409 and now through this one. If you were given information and acted on it, you are protected to the extent the breach resulted from the reliance.
Note the limit built into the words to the extent the breach resulted from the reliance. The protection is not a general immunity for the transaction. It covers the part of the harm traceable to the information you were given.
The one thing a beneficiary gets
A trust director shall provide information within the trust director’s knowledge or control to a qualified beneficiary upon a written request of a qualified beneficiary to the extent the information is reasonably related to the powers or duties of the trust director.
Section 736.141(5), Florida Statutes.
This is the only direct beneficiary right anywhere in Part XIV, and its conditions repay attention.
A qualified beneficiary, as defined in section 736.0103(19), not any beneficiary.
Upon a written request. Nothing is owed until you ask, and asking in conversation does not count.
Within the director’s knowledge or control, and reasonably related to the director’s powers or duties. A director cannot be made to obtain what it does not have, or to answer for the parts of the trust it has nothing to do with.
Set that against what a trustee owes under section 736.0813, which includes a duty to keep qualified beneficiaries reasonably informed and to account whether or not anyone asks. A director’s obligation is far smaller and entirely reactive. The article by the Act’s drafting chair confirms that was intended.
The draftspersons intended that a trust director have no other direct duty to account or provide information to a beneficiary (although a trust director may in its discretion issue a trust disclosure document to commence the statute of limitations for breach of trust).
Rubin and Rubin, The Florida Bar Journal, March/April 2022.
The parenthetical is the tactical point, and it cuts against the beneficiary. A director owing no duty to account may nonetheless choose to issue a disclosure document, because under section 736.1413 doing so starts a limitations period running in the director’s favour. Silence, then a document, then a clock.
The counterweight
Both sharing duties are expressly subject to section 736.1411, which says neither a trustee nor a director has any duty to monitor the other, or to advise anyone about how they would have acted differently.
Put the two together and the settlement is clear. You must hand over what you have that the other person’s role needs. You need not go and find out what they are doing.
A note on the section number
This section is 736.141, with three digits after the decimal, sitting between 736.1409 and 736.1411. There is no section 736.1410.
That is worth stating because it defeats ordinary research habits. A search built around four-digit section numbers will miss this section entirely, and we made exactly that mistake before catching it. Part XV has the same feature at section 736.151.
It also makes searching for the section number unreliable. A nationwide search for the digits returns nineteen documents, and we opened five. Not one contains the string. They are reporter citations in which two numbers happen to sit next to each other, such as a California case reported at volume 74, page 736, followed by a parallel citation beginning 141. The shorter the section number, the more of that noise you get.
No court has construed this section
Our review found no citing decision, with a Florida court filter and nationwide, at every precedential status.