Who’s In Charge? Trustee Management Duties for Your California Trust

[Music] Hi this Keith Davidson with Albertson and Davidson in this video I want to talk to you about what rights does a trustee have to take actions with your trust assets so you may think as the beneficiary of a trust that the assets belong to you and that therefore you should be the one making decisions about trust assets such as when to sell when to finance what to invest in and all of those types of management decisions but in fact with trusts it's very different because the nature of trust is that it actually divides up the ownership between the legal owner who's the trustee and the beneficial owner who may be you if you're a benefit beneficiary of a trust and the legal owner the trustee has the right in fact the exclusive right to make all the management decisions for your trust so the trustee alone gets to decide when to sell assets how to invest assets whether or not to refinance assets that's all the trustees decisions to make and the beneficiaries don't really have a direct right to get involved with those decisions but in an indirect way the beneficiaries do have a right to number one know what decisions the trustee is making because beneficiaries have a right to information on the trust assets and the actions of the trustee and number two ultimately at the end of the day the trustee is going to have to account to the beneficiaries so Alta Bennett if the trustee didn't do something correctly you know they sold a piece of property let's say for far below market value then the beneficiaries can hold the trustee liable for that bad decision so the beneficiaries can force the trustee to pay back the trust if the trustee makes bad decisions that harm the trust assets but the beneficiaries don't have a right to make those decisions that's what the trustee is supposed to do the trustee is the trust manager and that's a little unique in trust you don't usually get that with ownership of property if you own your own home you're both the legal owner because you can sell it refinance it do whatever you want and you're the beneficial owner because you have the right to either live there or rent it out and collect the rents you're one in the same but with trusts that gets divided up and so that's what's kind of unique about the management of trust assets and that's why beneficiaries don't always have a direct say and what happens with trust assets [Music] [Applause] you.