When a family member, friend, or professional steps into the role of executor or trustee, people often assume the job is mostly paperwork. In reality, it is a fiduciary role. That means the person in charge is expected to manage someone else’s money or property with loyalty, care, transparency, and attention to the governing documents. Courts, probate statutes, trust codes, and tax authorities all treat that role seriously.
This is where many estate and trust disputes begin. A fiduciary may not think they are doing anything wrong, yet beneficiaries start seeing unexplained delays, missing records, self-interested decisions, uneven treatment, or tax problems. In some situations, those facts can point to a breach of duty. If you want a broader foundation first, it may help to read this overview of how fiduciary duties work in estate and trust cases.
In this post, you’ll learn about 11 duties executors and trustees commonly violate, what those duties usually involve, and what patterns often lead beneficiaries to consult counsel.
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An executor, also called a personal representative in many states, generally gathers estate assets, addresses debts and taxes, and distributes what remains according to the will or state intestacy law. The IRS describes those general responsibilities as collecting assets, paying debts and taxes, and distributing remaining property, while also filing required returns and providing an accounting of assets and debts to the probate court when required by the case. IRS guidance and Publication 559 both outline those obligations.
A trustee’s job is similar in spirit but different in structure. Under the Uniform Trust Code, a trustee is expected to administer the trust in good faith, in accordance with its terms and purposes and the interests of the beneficiaries. The same code also describes core duties of loyalty, impartiality, prudent administration, recordkeeping, protection of trust property, and reporting to beneficiaries.
Those principles sound straightforward. In practice, they are where many lawsuits live.
A fiduciary’s first job is often the most basic: follow the instrument.
For trustees, the Uniform Trust Code states that upon accepting the role, “the trustee shall administer the trust in good faith, in accordance with its terms and purposes and the interests of the beneficiaries.” That language appears in Section 801 of the code published by the Uniform Law Commission. Executors are similarly expected to carry out the will and estate administration process according to the governing documents and applicable probate law.
Common examples include:
Sometimes the fiduciary argues that they were “just being practical.” Sometimes they claim everyone in the family agreed informally. Those explanations do not always resolve the problem, especially if the written terms point the other way.