Over the years, the obligation of a trustee to give notice to the settlor and beneficiaries has been far from uniform. Many states differentiated between types of trust with the general rule being that only the settlor required notice of certain key actions by the trustee as long as the trust remained revocable. However, this distinction was not always statutorily based and, in the case of Kentucky, the state Supreme Court refused to read this into the relevant code provisions. The most recent Uniform Trust Code enshrines the revocability doctrine in law but, depending of state, is not always guaranteed to be adopted. It is always advisable to review notice requirements when setting up a trust as this could be an easy way for an irate beneficiary to get into court.
See Terri Stallard, The Evolving Duty of Trustee Communication with Beneficiaries, National Law Review, May 15, 2015.
Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse for bringing this article to my attention.
