Trust Litigation in Probate Court: What the heck does that even mean???

In this video, partner Keith A. Davidson discusses some of the confusing terms used by Trust and Will lawyers. And why your Trust case could wind up in probate court after all.

The following is a transcript of this video:

Hi, this is Keith Davidson at Albertson & Davidson. I want to talk a little bit about what is trust litigation. And any time we are challenging a trust – whether it’s a trust contest, because we want to throw the trust out entirely, or we’re trying to remove a trustee, or we want the trustee to make proper distributions. All of those things are handled in California Probate Court.

And it might be a little confusing, because a lot of times people think wait, I thought probate was what you did if somebody died without a will or they die only having a will. Which is true. That is probate. There’s a probate process for that. But the Probate Court encompasses a lot more than just probates. It also handles trust matters, it handles conservatorships, it handles guardianships for children. It kind of takes all of those types of issues and it decides those within the Probate Court. So just because you’re in Probate Court, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing a probate.

You could be doing a trust litigation, which is really just any lawsuit that involves issues with a trust. So a trustee removal is trust litigation. Trying to contest the trust or the trust amendment is trust litigation. And asking for any type of petition for instructions, where you want the trustee to take a certain action, like sell real property, or sell stocks or bonds, or buy a real property – all of that comes within the overall umbrella of trust litigation and all of that, by and large, is going to be filed in Probate Court. That’s what Probate Court is there for. It’s not just for probates.