The trigger is the acceptance
By accepting appointment as a trust director of a trust subject to this part, the trust director submits to the personal jurisdiction of the courts of the state regarding any matter related to a power or duty of the trust director.
Section 736.1415(1), Florida Statutes.
Personal jurisdiction usually requires a connection between the defendant and the forum, such as residence, business, or contacts giving rise to the claim. This section supplies a different route. Accepting the role is treated as consent.
So a protector in New York, who has never set foot in Florida, who was named in a trust drafted by a Florida lawyer and said yes, can be sued in a Florida court on anything related to the role.
That is not exotic. Consent is a recognised basis for personal jurisdiction, and trustees have long been treated this way. What is worth noticing is that a trust director is often a family member or professional adviser who does not think of themselves as taking on an office at all, and this is one of several places in Part XIV where the consequences of accepting are larger than the title suggests. Our page on section 736.1408 covers the other one. The director is a fiduciary judged as a trustee.
How far it reaches
The words are any matter related to a power or duty of the trust director.
That is deliberately in between. It is not general jurisdiction, so a Florida court does not acquire the power to hear an unrelated dispute against the director. It is also not limited to the specific exercise of power complained of; anything related to a power or duty is within it, which would comfortably include questions of acceptance, resignation, compensation and information.
Subsection (2) then preserves everything else. The section does not preclude other methods of obtaining jurisdiction over a trust director. So a claimant who can establish jurisdiction on ordinary grounds does not lose that option, and a director who disputes acceptance is not thereby beyond reach.
Read it with the application section
This section is one half of a pair, and the pair is what makes it consequential.
Section 736.1403(2) provides that terms designating Florida as the principal place of administration are valid and controlling if a trust director’s principal place of business is in Florida or a director is a Florida resident. As the article by the Act’s drafting chair puts it, the location of a trust director in Florida is sufficient in and of itself to allow Florida to be the principal place of administration.
Put the two together.
- One Florida trust director, plus a designation in the terms, makes Florida the principal place of administration.
- That makes the trust subject to Part XIV under section 736.1403(1).
- Which makes every director of that trust, wherever they are, submit to Florida jurisdiction by accepting.
That is a designed result, not an accident. It is how Florida made itself a viable home for directed trusts, and it is worth understanding before agreeing to serve on one.
No court has construed this section
Our review found no citing decision, with a Florida court filter and nationwide, at every precedential status.
The untested question is the obvious one. The section makes acceptance consent, but section 736.1416(2) exists precisely because acceptance can be hard to establish. Many director powers sit unused for years, so there may be nothing to show acceptance happened. A director who never responded to a written demand, and never exercised a power, has arguably never accepted, and this section would not reach them.
The drafters anticipated that and left the resolution to a court determination rather than to an automatic rule. Whether acceptance occurred is likely to be the first fight in any case under this section, not the last.