Trust Attorney Did Not Owe Beneficiaries Fiduciary Duty

In a recent trust case from Florida and appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, life insurance trust beneficiaries brought a breach of fiduciary duty claim against the trustee’s attorney.

In Bain v McIntosh, the Eleventh Circuit held that the attorney did not have a fiduciary duty to the beneficiaries, reasoning that under the Florida Evidence Code and Rules of Professional Conduct the trustee and not the beneficiaries was the attorney’s client. However, the court dropped a footnote stating that the beneficiaries abandoned the argument that they were intended third-party beneficiaries by not including it in their initial brief.

See Jeffrey Skatoff, Attorney for Trust Owes No Fiduciary Duty to Beneficiaries, Clark Skatoff, March 4, 2015.