What is a Trustee? California Trust Law Explained

Reviewed by Rozsa Gyene, California attorney. Last reviewed October 2026.

By Rozsa Gyene, attorney (State Bar #208356) | Published December 2025, updated October 2026

The Trustee and the Other Roles in a California Trust

Every trust has three roles. The settlor (also called the trustor or grantor) creates the trust and puts property into it. The trustee holds legal title to that property and manages it. The beneficiaries have the right, now or later, to receive money or property from the trust. The Santa Clara County Superior Court's self-help page puts it simply: the trustee is "the person (or people) who holds legal title to the property that is in the trust."

The Probate Code's own definition is short. Section 84 says "trustee" includes an original, additional, or successor trustee, whether or not appointed or confirmed by a court. That last part matters: a successor trustee of a living trust gets authority from the trust document, not from a judge. There are no letters of appointment like an executor receives in probate.

In a revocable living trust, one person usually fills all three roles at first. If you sign a trust as settlor and name yourself trustee, title to your home is recorded in a form such as "Ana Reyes, Trustee of the Ana Reyes Living Trust dated March 3, 2026." You still decide everything. Probate Code §15800 says that while the trust is revocable and the person who can revoke it is competent, that person, not the beneficiaries, holds the beneficiaries' rights, and the trustee's duties are owed to that person. Your children named as beneficiaries have no right to an accounting from you while you are alive and well. Unless the trust is expressly made irrevocable, a California trust is revocable by the settlor (§15400).

Kinds of Trustees: Successor, Co-Trustee, Corporate, Professional

Initial trustee

The first trustee named in the trust. In most California living trusts this is the settlor, or both spouses in a joint trust for a married couple.

Successor trustee

The person who takes over when the trustee before them dies, resigns, is removed or can no longer act. When a settlor-trustee becomes incapacitated, the trust document usually sets the test, for example a letter from one or two physicians. Probate Code §15800(c) recognizes incompetency established either by the method the trust specifies or by a court. A well drafted trust names at least two successors in order, so a vacancy does not send the family to court.

Co-trustees

Two or more people serving at the same time. The default rule is strict: "Unless otherwise provided in the trust instrument, a power vested in two or more trustees may only be exercised by their unanimous action" (§15620). If one co-trustee leaves office, the others may act as if they were the only trustees (§15621). If one is only temporarily unavailable because of absence or illness, the others may act where necessary to carry out the trust or to avoid irreparable injury to trust property (§15622). Naming three adult children as co-trustees sounds fair, but under the unanimity rule one sibling can stop a house sale. Many trusts therefore let co-trustees act by majority or let either of two act alone.

Corporate trustee

A bank trust department or trust company. The Probate Code defines a trust company as an entity that has qualified to engage in and conduct a trust business in California (§83). Families choose one for continuity and neutrality. Its fee follows the trust's compensation clause or, if the trust is silent, must be reasonable (§15681), and a court can review whether a trustee's pay is reasonable (§17200(b)(9)).

Professional fiduciary

An individual paid to manage trusts for people outside their family. California regulates this. Under Business and Professions Code §6501, a professional fiduciary includes a person who acts as a trustee for four or more individuals at the same time, not counting the fiduciary's own relatives and counting related trustors as one. Since January 1, 2009, §6530 bars anyone from acting as or holding themselves out as a professional fiduciary without a license from the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau. Attorneys are exempt, and trust companies and FDIC insured banks fall outside the definition. Before hiring a private fiduciary, check the license on the Bureau's website.

Who Can Serve as Trustee, and What Happens If No One Will

The trust document decides. The Probate Code does not hand the job to a spouse or the oldest child by default; it fills a vacancy from the names and methods in the trust first (§15660(b)). In practice the choice is between a spouse, an adult child, another relative or friend, a licensed professional fiduciary and a trust company.

Accepting or declining the job

Being named does not obligate anyone. Under §15600 a person accepts the trust by signing the trust or a separate written acceptance, or by knowingly exercising powers or performing duties under it. Someone who will not serve should say so in writing and should not start handling trust property, because acting can count as acceptance. There is one narrow exception: a named trustee may act to preserve trust property in an emergency without accepting, if they deliver a written rejection within a reasonable time (§15600(b)).

When the office of trustee is vacant

Section 15643 lists when there is a vacancy: the named trustee rejects the trust, cannot be identified or does not exist, resigns or is removed, or dies; a conservator or guardian is appointed for an individual trustee; the trustee is the subject of an order for relief in bankruptcy; or a trust company's charter is revoked or its powers suspended for 30 days or more, or a receiver appointed for it is not discharged within 30 days. The vacancy is then filled in this order (§15660):

1. The person the trust names, or by the method the trust provides.
2. If that fails, a trust company that agrees to serve, if all adult beneficiaries who are receiving or entitled to receive income or principal agree.
3. If that fails, the court appoints a trustee on petition of any interested person. The court considers nominations by beneficiaries who are 14 or older.

A co-trustee vacancy does not have to be filled unless the trust requires it (§15660(a)).

People the law treats with suspicion

Section 21380 presumes that a gift to certain people is the product of fraud or undue influence, including the person who drafted the document and a care custodian of a dependent adult who signed it while receiving care. If such a person is the sole trustee, §15642(b)(6) lets the court remove them unless it finds, on all the facts, that keeping them is consistent with the settlor's intent and that this intent was not the product of fraud or undue influence. That removal ground does not apply if the settlor is related by blood or marriage to (or lives with) the trustee or the drafter, or if an independent attorney counsels the settlor and signs a certificate of independent review. A caregiver can be a good trustee; an unrelated caregiver as the only trustee, without that certificate, invites a court fight.

A worked example

Ana, a widow in Burbank, signs a trust naming herself trustee, her daughter Lucia as first successor and her son Marco as second. Ana deeds her house to herself as trustee. While Ana is competent she runs everything and owes no report to her children (§15800). If two physicians later certify under the trust's incapacity clause that Ana cannot manage her finances, Lucia becomes trustee without a court hearing. If Lucia declines in writing, Marco steps in under §15660(b). If Marco has also died, the adult beneficiaries can agree on a trust company, and only if they cannot does anyone go to court.

The same plan fails if the house was never deeded to the trust. A successor trustee manages what the trust owns. A house left in Ana's own name generally goes through probate, where statutory attorney and executor fees on a $1,000,000 gross value come to $46,000 under Probate Code §§10800 and 10810, before costs. Our California probate cost calculator runs the numbers for other values. Our office prepares a trust for $400 (single) or $500 (married couple), and a $400 trust plus $100 deed keeps a home like Ana's out of probate. See living trusts in Burbank for how the deed is recorded with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder in Norwalk.

What a Trustee Can Do Without a Court Order

Section 16200 gives a trustee three layers of power without court authorization: (a) the powers conferred by the trust instrument; (b) except as the trust limits them, the powers conferred by statute; and (c) except as the trust limits it, the power to perform any act a trustee would perform for the purposes of the trust under the standard of care in §16040 or §16047. Sections 16220 through 16249 then list specific statutory powers. Among them, the trustee has the power to:

• acquire or dispose of property, for cash or on credit, at public or private sale, or by exchange (§16226), which is how a successor trustee sells a house without a probate court confirming the sale;
• manage, control, divide, develop, improve, exchange, partition, change the character of, or abandon trust property (§16227);
• enter into a lease for any purpose as lessor or lessee (§16231), for example renting out a parent's home before it is sold;
• borrow money for any trust purpose to be repaid from trust property (§16241);
• pay a distribution to a beneficiary, or to another person for the beneficiary's use or benefit, even if the beneficiary is under a legal disability (§16245);
• hire accountants, attorneys, auditors, investment advisers, appraisers and others to advise or assist with administrative duties (§16247); and
• prosecute or defend actions, claims or proceedings to protect trust property and the trustee in the performance of the trustee's duties (§16249).

Having a power is not the same as being free to use it. Section 16202 says the grant of a power does not in itself require or permit its exercise, and every exercise of a power is subject to the trustee's fiduciary duties. A trustee may sell the house; selling it to a friend at a discount is still a breach.

Proving the trustee's power to a bank or title company

A trustee does not have to hand over the whole trust. Under Probate Code §18100.5 the trustee may give a certification of trust instead: a declaration signed by all acting trustees and acknowledged before a notary, stating that the trust exists, who the settlor and trustees are, the trustee's powers, whether the trust is revocable and how title to trust assets is taken. The bank may ask for excerpts showing who the successor trustees are and the power being used, but not the provisions that say who inherits. A person who relies on the certification without knowing it is wrong is not liable, and one who refuses it in bad faith and demands the whole trust can be liable for damages and attorney's fees.

What a trustee must do after the settlor dies, step by step, including the notice to beneficiaries and heirs and the accounting, is covered in our successor trustee duties checklist.

Resignation and Removal of a Trustee

Resigning

A trustee who has accepted cannot simply walk away. Under §15640 a trustee may resign (a) as the trust instrument provides; (b) for a revocable trust, with the consent of the person holding the power to revoke; (c) for an irrevocable trust, with the consent of all adult beneficiaries who are receiving or entitled to receive income or principal; or (d) by court order on the trustee's own petition under §17200. Until the property is delivered to the next trustee, the former trustee remains responsible for it and keeps the powers reasonably necessary to preserve it (§15644).

Removing a trustee

Section 15642(a) says a trustee may be removed in accordance with the trust instrument, by the court on its own motion, or on petition of a settlor, cotrustee or beneficiary under §17200. Check the trust first: many trusts let the settlor, or a majority of adult beneficiaries, replace a trustee without going to court. One limit matters for families: while a revocable trust's settlor is alive and competent, the beneficiaries' rights belong to the settlor (§15800), and §17200(a) is expressly subject to §15800, so an adult child who is only a future beneficiary generally cannot petition to remove a parent as trustee of the parent's own revocable trust.

The grounds for removal by the court in §15642(b) are:

1. The trustee has committed a breach of the trust.
2. The trustee is insolvent or otherwise unfit to administer the trust.
3. Hostility or lack of cooperation among cotrustees impairs the administration of the trust.
4. The trustee fails or declines to act.
5. The trustee's compensation is excessive under the circumstances.
6. The sole trustee is a person described in §21380(a), such as the drafter or a care custodian, unless the settlor is related to them, an independent attorney certified the designation, or the court finds keeping them is consistent with the settlor's intent (see above).
7. Under the capacity rules of Probate Code §810 and following, the trustee is substantially unable to manage the trust's financial resources or otherwise to perform the duties of the office.
8. The trustee is substantially unable to resist fraud or undue influence.
9. For other good cause.

Costs follow the result in two situations. A trustee removed under ground 6 bears all costs of the proceeding, including reasonable attorney's fees (§15642(c)). If the court finds a removal petition was filed in bad faith and that removal would be contrary to the settlor's intent, it may order the people who brought it to bear all or part of the costs (§15642(d)). While a petition is pending, the court may make the trustee surrender trust property to a co-trustee, receiver or temporary trustee if the property or a beneficiary's interest may otherwise suffer loss (§15642(e)). The petition is filed in the superior court of the county where the trust's principal place of administration is (§17005). In Los Angeles County, Local Rule 2.3 requires trust proceedings to be filed in the Central District, which hears probate at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, except that a trust whose trustee's principal place of administration is in the North District may be filed there.

A beneficiary who wants information rather than removal can start smaller. Section 17200(b) also lets a beneficiary ask the court to instruct the trustee or to compel an account when a written request for one has gone unanswered for 60 days and no account was made in the prior six months. If the trust has a no contest clause, read our guide to no contest clauses in California trusts before filing anything.

Questions About Trustees