A breach of fiduciary duty often sits at the center of trust and estate litigation, especially when an executor, trustee, or other fiduciary had control over money, property, or decision-making authority and used that position in a way that harmed beneficiaries. In plain language, a fiduciary is a person entrusted to act for someone else’s benefit, not their own. Courts and legal authorities generally describe fiduciary obligations in terms of loyalty, care or prudence, good faith, impartiality, disclosure, and accountability. The legal remedies can include repayment, removal, reduced compensation, tracing of assets, and what many courts and lawyers call a surcharge claim—a request to make the fiduciary financially answer for loss, misuse, or improper gain. See the Legal Information Institute’s overview of fiduciary duty and fiduciary duties of trustees.
If your broader concern involves a larger inheritance fight, it may help to start with this overview of probate and estate litigation issues that often overlap with fiduciary disputes.
In this post, you’ll learn what a fiduciary duty is, how the duties of loyalty and prudence work in real cases, what courts often look for when conflicts of interest appear, and how surcharge claims can come into play when money or property was mishandled.
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A fiduciary duty is a legal obligation arising when one person accepts authority to act for another person’s benefit. In trust and estate matters, that role often belongs to a trustee, executor, administrator, or personal representative. According to Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, fiduciary duties commonly include loyalty and care, and trustees also owe duties such as good faith and, when there are multiple beneficiaries, impartiality among them. The American Bar Association likewise describes executors and trustees as people acting in a fiduciary capacity for the decedent or trust beneficiaries. See LII on fiduciary duties of trustees and the ABA’s guidelines for individual executors and trustees.
In practical terms, this often means the fiduciary is expected to:
If you’re looking for a simpler starting point focused on estate and trust administration, this guide on claims involving executors and trustees may be useful alongside this article.