Beneficiaries are supposed to receive reasonable information and timely distributions of their share of the Trust money and property. Unfortunately, many beneficiaries are kept in the dark and receive no Trust distributions. In other words, they receive no money and no information.
It can be hard to know what to do when you are kept in the dark. For example, the Trustee may be collecting rents on an apartment building owned by the Trust. But the beneficiary may have no idea how much is being collected, where the rent is being deposited, what the expenses are for the apartment building, or where the remaining profit is going. Is the trustee holding your portion for later distribution or is the Trustee putting all the money in their own pocket? All of this is reasonable information that the Trustee should tell the beneficiary. But when they refuse to do so, the beneficiary must take action.
The first step is to go to court and ask a judge to order the Trustee to give you reasonable information about the Trust assets. Once you file a Trust lawsuit, you can issue subpoenas to banks and brokerage firms. You can even subpoena property management companies to find out who’s collecting the rents and where the rent money is going. This is a great advantage because it allows you to get information directly from the source – bank account statements, financial statements, rent information directly from the financial companies where the money is held.
The second step is to take action to enforce your rights. After you have enough information to understand what damage has been done, you can go about fixing the damage. The key is to get the Trust money into your hands. Once you have control of your own money, you can make investments.
When a bad Trustee has control of your money, they tend to do bad things with it. They invest poorly, they mismanage it, or they just outright steal it. By transferring your share of the Trust into your control, you can then decide how best to manage it and turn it into a nest egg to support you for your lifetime.
If you are a beneficiary who is being kept in the dark, you have to act fast. Hire a good lawyer, get the information you need to make good decisions, and then enforce your rights! You deserve to have the Trust upheld according to how it was intended to work—not according to the whims of a bad Trustee. Contact us now.
