What Is a Trustee, and What Does a Florida Trustee Have to Do?

1. What a Trustee Is

A trustee is the person or company that holds property for someone else’s benefit and manages it under the written instructions in a trust. The trustee signs for the bank accounts, signs the deeds and makes the investment decisions. The beneficiaries are the people the property is held for, and the settlor (also called the grantor) is the person who created the trust and put the property into it.

Florida’s trust code defines the trustee to include the original trustee, any additional trustee, any successor trustee and any co-trustee, so every person who ever holds the job carries the same duties. The code’s definitions also include a testator as a settlor, which is how a trust written into a will is covered by the same rules.

Florida requires two things of the trustee before a trust even exists. The trustee must have duties to perform, and the same person cannot be the sole trustee and the sole beneficiary, because then nobody holds the property for anyone else. A husband and wife who serve as co-trustees of their own living trust meet that rule, and so does a mother who is trustee for her children. The rules on when a Florida trust exists list the full test.

2. What a Trusteeship Is

A trusteeship is the office of trustee, the position itself. Florida’s trust code treats it the way the law treats any office. A person named as trustee accepts the trusteeship by following the trust’s acceptance method or by acting as trustee, and may decline it instead. Someone who does not accept within a reasonable time after learning of the appointment is treated as having declined.

The office falls vacant on six events. The named trustee declines, cannot be identified or does not exist, resigns, is disqualified or removed, dies, or is adjudicated incapacitated by a court. A vacancy is filled first by the successor the trust names, then by someone all the qualified beneficiaries agree on, and last by the court. The rules on replacing a trustee set that order out in full.

3. What a Florida Trustee Must Do

From the day of acceptance, Florida law puts a list of duties on every trustee. The trust document can adjust some of them, and Florida puts the core ones beyond the document’s reach, including the duty to act in good faith and the duty to account once the trust is irrevocable.

1. Good faith. The trustee must administer the trust in good faith, following its terms and purposes and the interests of the beneficiaries.
2. Loyalty. The trustee must act solely in the beneficiaries’ interests. A sale or loan between the trust and the trustee personally can be undone by an affected beneficiary, and a deal with the trustee’s spouse, children, siblings or parents is presumed to be conflicted. Our page on the duty of loyalty lists the exceptions.
3. Impartiality. Where a trust has two or more beneficiaries, the trustee must treat their interests fairly, such as a surviving spouse who gets the income and children who get what is left.
4. Prudence. The trustee must manage the property as a prudent person would, with reasonable care, skill and caution, and take reasonable steps to take control of the property and protect it.
5. Records and separation. The trustee must keep clear, distinct and accurate records and keep trust property separate from the trustee’s own.
6. Information. Once the trust is irrevocable, the trustee must send the qualified beneficiaries two notices within 60 days and a trust accounting at least once a year.

A beneficiary’s side of those duties, including how to demand a copy of the trust, is in our guide to Florida trust beneficiary rights.

4. Who Can Serve as Trustee

Florida’s statute recites that any person, regardless of state of residence and including a family member, friend or corporate fiduciary, is eligible to serve as a trustee unless the trust itself disqualifies them. A son in Ohio can serve as trustee of his mother’s Florida trust. Florida is stricter about the executor of a will, called the personal representative, who must be a Florida resident or a close relative, and our comparison of the trustee and the executor covers the difference.

Families usually choose among three kinds of trustee.

• A family member. A son or daughter knows the family and usually charges nothing, and has to handle the investments, the tax returns and the accountings personally or hire help.
• A bank or trust company. A corporate trustee has the systems and does not die or move away, and charges a published annual fee based on the trust’s size.
• Co-trustees. A child and a professional can serve together, and co-trustees who cannot agree act by majority.

The trust should also name at least two successors in order, so a vacancy never sends the family to court for an appointment.

5. Revocable Trustee vs. Irrevocable Trustee

A revocable trustee serves a trust the grantor can still change or cancel, which is every revocable living trust while its creator is alive and competent. The grantor is usually the first trustee. While the trust can be revoked, the trustee’s duties are owed to the grantor alone, the trustee may follow the grantor’s directions even where they depart from the trust’s terms, and the children who will inherit later have no right to accountings. The page on who the trustee answers to covers that rule.

An irrevocable trustee serves a trust that can no longer be changed by its creator. A living trust becomes irrevocable at the grantor’s death, and some trusts, such as an irrevocable trust for asset protection or a life insurance trust, are irrevocable from the day they are signed. The irrevocable trustee answers to the beneficiaries. Within 60 days of learning the trust is irrevocable, the trustee must tell the qualified beneficiaries that the trust exists, who created it, that they may request a copy, and that they are entitled to accountings. The annual accounting follows every year after.

6. The Successor Trustee

A successor trustee is the person the trust names to take over when the current trustee stops serving. In a living trust that usually means taking over at the grantor’s incapacity or death. The trust’s incapacity clause decides how the successor steps in while the grantor is alive, and without one, Florida counts a trustee’s incapacity as a vacancy only once a court has adjudicated it. Our guide to the Florida successor trustee covers the first 30 days, and the guide to Florida trust administration covers what follows a death.

7. Getting Paid, and Getting Removed

A trustee is entitled to be paid. If the trust sets the fee, the trustee is paid as it says, and if the trust is silent, the trustee is entitled to compensation that is reasonable under the circumstances. Our page on Florida trustee fees covers what reasonable tends to mean, and many family trustees waive the fee for tax reasons.

A Florida court can remove a trustee on four grounds, namely a serious breach of trust, a lack of cooperation among co-trustees that impairs the administration, the trustee’s unfitness, unwillingness or persistent failure to administer the trust effectively, or a substantial change of circumstances or a request by all the qualified beneficiaries where removal serves them all and a suitable replacement is available. The grantor, a co-trustee or a beneficiary can ask, and the court can act on its own.

What Does a Trust Cost to Set Up or Administer?

A revocable trust drafted on its own is a flat fee from $2,400, and $3,200 for a couple. The Complete Trust Plan, which adds the will, the power of attorney, the health-care documents and a deed funding the trust, is a flat fee from $3,200, and $4,500 for a couple. Administering a trust after a death, including the notices and the accountings, is a flat fee quoted at consult. Recording and other government costs are additional and passed through at cost. Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date. Removing a trustee or compelling an accounting is litigation, which we quote per matter rather than as a flat fee.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The daughter named in her mother’s trust. A mother signs a living trust naming herself trustee and her daughter as successor. For years the daughter has no role and no right to see the accounts, because the trust is revocable and the duties run to the mother alone. When the mother dies, the daughter accepts, sends the two 60-day notices to her brothers, and starts the annual accountings.

The brother who wants his wife to list the house. A brother serving as trustee wants to hire his wife, a licensed realtor, to sell the trust’s house. Florida presumes a transaction with the trustee’s spouse is conflicted, so he gets written consent from the other beneficiaries first, or hires an unrelated broker.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §736.0103(4),(19),(20),(21),(27) (beneficiary, qualified beneficiary, revocable, settlor including a testator, trustee); §736.0402(1)(d)-(e) (the trustee has duties to perform; the same person is not the sole trustee and sole beneficiary).
• Fla. Stat. §736.0105 (annotated)(2)(b),(r),(s) (the duty of good faith and the notice and accounting duties prevail over the trust’s terms); §736.0701 (accepting or declining a trusteeship); §736.0703 (annotated)(1) (co-trustees act by majority); §736.0704(1),(3) (vacancy events and order of appointment).
• Fla. Stat. §736.0801 (duty to administer); §736.0802(1),(2),(3)(a)1. (duty of loyalty; voidable transactions; presumed conflict with the trustee’s spouse); §736.0803 (annotated) (impartiality); §736.0804 (annotated) (prudent administration); §736.0809 (annotated) (control and protection of trust property); §736.0810 (annotated)(1)-(2) (records; trust property kept separate).
• Fla. Stat. §736.0603(1),(3) (while revocable, duties owed exclusively to the settlor; trustee may follow the settlor’s direction); §736.0813 (annotated)(1)(a),(b),(d),(4) (60-day notices; annual accountings; duties extend only to the settlor while revocable).
• Fla. Stat. §736.0708 (annotated)(1),(4)(a)1. (reasonable compensation; any person regardless of residence eligible to serve as trustee); §736.0706(2) (grounds for removal); §736.1008 (annotated)(6) (outer repose periods of 10, 20 and 40 years on claims against a trustee).
• Case retold below: Harrell v. Badger, 171 So. 3d 764 (Fla. 5th DCA 2015). Opinion read in full; retrieved September 30, 2026.

Why the Choice of Trustee Decides So Much

In my practice, the question families spend the least time on is who should serve as trustee, and it is the question that decides the most. The document can be excellent and still depend entirely on the person holding it.

A decision of a Florida appeals court in 2015 shows how far that can go. A mother’s will left the rest of her estate in a trust for her adopted son, with the income paid to him every month and principal available for his support, and whatever remained at his death going to his two sisters. She named her own sisters as co-trustees, and both resigned after she died. One of the son’s sisters served for a time and then resigned after disputes, and in 2006 a court appointed the son’s neighbor as trustee, with a $300,000 bond and accountings every six months. The neighbor posted the bond more than a year late and filed one accounting. In January 2008 he sold the mother’s house, the trust’s last asset, using his own wife as the realtor at a 5% commission, without the court approval he had asked for and never received. He wired the proceeds into a pooled special needs trust whose leftover money would go to strangers rather than the sisters, and the people running that pooled trust later went to prison for misappropriating money they had moved out of it. The sisters first heard about any of it in 2011, when he asked the court to end the trust. The trial court sided with him and ordered the sisters to pay $85,005.50 of his attorney’s fees. The appeals court reversed, sent the case back to value the trust and order the money returned, reversed the fee award, and ordered him removed as trustee once money came back into the trust.

My reading of that case is that nothing in the mother’s will went wrong. Every failure came from who ended up holding the office. In reviewing Florida cases on how trustees are chosen and replaced, I have a few take-home points.

The first is the list of successors. The mother named two trustees and no one behind them, so when both resigned the choice passed to a courtroom. The practice pointer is to name at least two successors in order, and to name a bank or trust company as the last one, so the office never falls to whoever is nearest.

The second is the spouse. Hiring a spouse to sell trust property is the transaction Florida now presumes to be conflicted. Avoid any deal between the trust and the trustee’s own family without written consent from the other beneficiaries or a court order, because the deal can be undone and the trustee answers for the difference.

The third is notice. The sisters were the remainder beneficiaries and learned about the sale three years after it closed. A trustee who tells the beneficiaries before a major sale or transfer starts the clock on their objections, and one who stays silent leaves the transaction open to challenge for years.

An owner can build these protections into the trust at the drafting stage, including the successor list, a rule against family transactions, and the power for a named person to remove a trustee without going to court, and every Complete Trust Plan I prepare, flat fee from $3,200, addresses who serves. One limit is worth stating plainly. The appeals court sent the case back for a hearing on what the trust was worth, so the opinion does not say how much of the money the sisters recovered.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. Each case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on September 30, 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, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.