What is trust administration in California?

The process a successor trustee carries out after the settlor's death to settle the trust: accepting the office, serving the notification required by Probate Code section 16061.7, collecting and valuing the assets, paying debts and taxes, accounting to beneficiaries, and making the distributions the trust directs.

Does trust administration go through probate court?

Ordinarily no. A properly funded living trust is administered privately. A court becomes involved if an interested person petitions for instructions, an accounting, enforcement, or resolution of a dispute, or if a particular asset requires a court proceeding.

How long does trust administration take in California?

There is no single statutory completion period. Timing depends on the trust terms, assets, tax work, debts, sales, beneficiary issues, and whether the trustee has served the notice that starts the contest period. A trustee should not promise a distribution date before those constraints are known.

Can I administer a trust without a lawyer?

Legally, yes — no statute requires counsel. Whether it is wise depends on the assets and the beneficiaries. A trustee is personally liable for a breach, and the two most common breaches are procedural: distributing before the contest period closes, and paying trust expenses from a personal account.

What does a successor trustee do first?

Confirm the appointment and accept the office, locate the trust and every amendment, read them, secure trust property, and identify everyone entitled to notice. When section 16061.7 applies, service is generally due within 60 days of the event that triggered notice, subject to the statute's rules for a vacancy or a later-discovered recipient.

Is a trustee paid for administering a trust?

Yes, unless the trust says otherwise. California sets no percentage. Where the instrument fixes an amount, that amount governs; where it is silent, section 15681 allows reasonable compensation under the circumstances, judged on the work actually done.

California Trust Administration

Trust administration is what a successor trustee does after a settlor dies: accepting the office, notifying beneficiaries and heirs when required, gathering and valuing assets, paying proper debts and taxes, accounting, and distributing what the trust directs. It ordinarily proceeds without ongoing court supervision.

A bound trust document open on a table beside a pen and a stack of unopened envelopes. — The document names the successor. The fiduciary duties attach when that person accepts the trust.

What administration is, and what it is not

A revocable living trust keeps an estate out of probate by making a private officer — the successor trustee — do the work a court-appointed representative would otherwise do under supervision. Nobody issues letters. No judge signs off on the inventory. Probate Code section 16000 supplies the authority and the constraint together: on acceptance, the trustee has a duty to administer the trust according to the trust instrument and, where the instrument is silent, according to the Trust Law. Two obligations run from the first day. Section 16060 requires the trustee to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed of the trust and its administration, which is a standing duty rather than an annual event. And section 16061.7 requires notification to be served on each beneficiary of the now-irrevocable trust and each heir of the deceased settlor. That notice is also the trustee’s own protection: service starts the 120-day period under section 16061.8 in which a contest must be brought, and until it is served, nobody’s clock runs.

Sources: Probate Code s.16060 - Trustee duty to inform and report · Probate Code s.16061.7 - Trustee notification · Probate Code s.16061.8 - 120-day contest period · Probate Code s.16000 - Duty to administer the trust according to the trust instrument · Verified 2026-08-03.

The sequence, and roughly when each part happens

Stage	What the trustee does	Typical timing
Accept the office	Locate the original trust and every amendment; read them before acting	Week 1
Secure the assets	Change locks if needed, confirm insurance, stop automatic payments	Weeks 1–2
Serve the notification	When section 16061.7 applies, on each beneficiary of the irrevocable trust or portion and each heir of the deceased settlor, subject to the statute’s limitations	Generally within 60 days of the triggering event
Obtain a taxpayer number	The trust is now a separate taxpayer; open an account in its name	Month 1
Inventory and value	Date-of-death values for every asset, including a qualified appraisal where one is needed	Months 1–3
Debts, expenses and taxes	Final personal income tax return, any trust return, creditors, property tax	Months 2–9
Account to beneficiaries	The report the Trust Law requires, showing receipts, disbursements and property held	Before distribution
Distribute	Outright shares, or funding the sub-trusts the instrument creates	After the contest window closes

These are planning ranges, not legal deadlines. The notification has a statutory service period when section 16061.7 applies; the rest depend on the instrument, assets, taxes, debts and any dispute.

The mistakes that turn administration into litigation

Four recurring errors can turn a private administration into litigation. Distributing before claims, taxes and a possible contest are addressed can expose the trustee if property later has to be recovered. Paying trust expenses from a personal account — or the reverse — can breach the duty to keep property separate and makes the accounting difficult to reconstruct. Going silent conflicts with the duty to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed. And using, renting, or buying trust property for the trustee’s own benefit raises the conflict and self-dealing rules even if the trustee believes the price is fair. None requires bad intent; all are easier to prevent than to unwind.

Trust administration or probate?

The two are not alternatives so much as two answers to what the decedent owned at death. Property titled in the name of the trust is administered under the trust. Property in the decedent’s own name is not, however clear the trust’s intentions were, and it needs probate administration or one of the statutory shortcuts — unless the asset was meant to be in the trust and never retitled, which is what a Heggstad petition exists to fix. Many estates run both processes at once. Whether probate is needed at all is the question to settle first.

The parts of the job, in detail

When a beneficiary is on the other side of this

This page is written for the trustee. The same events look different from the receiving end, and those pages are written from there: what a beneficiary is entitled to, what the notification means when it arrives, and how long the contest window actually runs. A trustee reading those is doing the job properly — they are the questions the beneficiaries are about to ask.

The Probate Code sections behind this page

Each section links to its official text at the California Legislature’s own site. The full index of sections covers the rest of the Code.

Also cited above, explained elsewhere on this site

Probate Code section 16000: Duty to administer the trust according to the trust instrument. Where section 16000 is explained
Probate Code section 16060: Trustee duty to inform and report. Where section 16060 is explained
Probate Code section 16061.7: Trustee notification. Where section 16061.7 is explained
Probate Code section 16062: Duty to account to beneficiaries. Where section 16062 is explained
Probate Code section 15681: Reasonable compensation where the trust is silent. Where section 15681 is explained