Can’t Someone Reasonable Just Step in Here? Trustee Suspension in California Trusts

If you have a bad Trustee, why can't someone reasonable just step in to take care of the Trust management? That goes to Trustee suspension. There are cases where a Trustee can be suspended while you're waiting for an outcome on a Trustee removal petition. But suspension can be tricky. Find out more in this video.

The following is a verbatim transcript of this video:

Hi, this is Keith Davidson from Albertson & Davidson.

Today I want to talk to you about trustee suspension. And if you file a petition to remove a trustee, you also can go to the court and ask for a temporary suspension of that trustee pending an outcome on your removal petition.

Suspension is not easy to get, however, because you’re asking the judge to shoot from the hip. You’re asking them to remove a trustee when there’s been no concrete evidence presented to the judge. Remember, evidence comes at time of trial. What you put in your pleadings and file with the court is not evidence, it’s just allegations. And so you’re asking the court to take an action without having received all of the evidence at a trial. And that’s what suspension calls for.

So, if you want suspension, there’s a couple of things that are going to, probably, increase your chances. First of all, you have to show that there’s an immediate harm to the trust. So the fact that the trustee hasn’t accounted to you, or the fact that the trustee hasn’t made distributions to you, those things are not necessarily immediate needs, because they can be handled in due course throughout the process. The court can order an accounting; it can order a distribution. It’s not going to – you’re not going to suffer an immediate harm to the trust by forcing a suspension on those issues.

Compare that to a situation where let’s say you have apartments in the trust and rents are coming in but the trustee isn’t paying the mortgages on the apartments and all the apartments are in foreclosure. That would be an immediate need. That’s a case where the trust is going to lose property if the court doesn’t act to suspend the trustee, and that’s where you would want to step in and explain that to the court. Of course, you have to have something to back it up. You’re going to have to show something as to the fact that what you’re saying is correct. You can’t just go in and say I think the properties are in foreclosure. But you would know if they’re in foreclosure, because those are public filings and you can attach those to your ex parte petition and that increases your chances of suspending a trustee.

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