Skip to Content (Press Enter)

Skip to Nav (Press Enter)

Trusts

The following summaries are of recent published decisions of the California appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. The summaries are presented without regard to whether Severson & Werson represented a party in the case.

Subscribe to California Appellate Tracker

Thank you for your desire to subscribe to Severson & Werson’s Appellate Tracker Weblog. In order to subscribe, you must provide a valid name and e-mail address. This too will be retained on our server. When you push the “subscribe button”, we will send an electronic mail to the address that you provided asking you to confirm your subscription to our Weblog. By pushing the “subscribe button”, you represent and warrant that you are over the age of 18 years old, are the owner/authorized user of that e-mail address, and are entitled to receive e-mails at that address. Our weblog will retain your name and e-mail address on its server, or the server of its web host. However, we won’t share any of this information with anyone except the Firm’s employees and contractors, except under certain extraordinary circumstances described on our Privacy Policy and (About The Consumer Finance Blog/About the Appellate Tracker Weblog) Page. NOTICE AND AGREEMENT REGARDING E-MAILS AND CALLS/TEXT MESSAGES TO LAND-LINE AND WIRELESS TELEPHONES: By providing your contact information and confirming your subscription in response to the initial e-mail that we send you, you agree to receive e-mail messages from Severson & Werson from time-to-time and understand and agree that such messages are or may be sent by means of automated dialing technology. If you have your email forwarded to other electronic media, including text messages and cellular telephone by way of VoIP, internet, social media, or otherwise, you agree to receive my messages in that way. This may result in charges to you. Your agreement and consent also extend to any other agents, affiliates, or entities to whom our communications are forwarded. You agree that you will notify Severson & Werson in writing if you revoke this agreement and that your revocation will not be effective until you notify Severson & Werson in writing. You understand and agree that you will afford Severson & Werson a reasonable time to unsubscribe you from the website, that the ability to do so depends on Severson & Werson’s press of business and access to the weblog, and that you may still receive one or more emails or communications from weblog until we are able to unsubscribe you.

On a prior appeal in the same case, the Court of Appeal had held that Tyler’s judicial defense of the 2007 Amendment to her parents' Trust, an amendment that she had procured through undue influence constituted a direct contest of the Trust and that Tyler lacked probable cause to defendant that amendment.  Key v. Tyler (2019) 34 Cal.App.5th 505, 510. … Read More

A special needs trust is one established for a severely disabled person.  The trust is designed to supplement public assistance the beneficiary receives without rendering the beneficiary ineligible for that public assistance.  This decision holds that the trustee has discretion under a special needs trust to pay for goods and services for the beneficiary that are not supplied by public… Read More

Following Balistreri v. Balistreri (2022) 75 Cal.App.5th 511, this decision holds that if a trust provides a procedure or method for amending the trust, whether phrased as exclusive or optional, any amendment must conform to that procedure or method; otherwise it is invalid.  Prob. Code 15402’s “qualification ‘[u]nless the trust instrument provides otherwise’ indicates that if any modification method is… Read More

World Services holds intellectual property rights in Narcotics Anonymous' publications as trustee under a trust created by a loose association of Narcotics Anonymous adherents, known as the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous.  The Autonomous Region sued World Services claiming it breached its fiduciary duties under the trust.  This opinion affirms dismissal of the action on the ground that Autonomous Region lacks… Read More

If a trust provides a procedure or method for amending the trust, whether phrased as exclusive or optional, any amendment must conform to that procedure or method; otherwise it is invalid.  Prob. Code 15402’s “qualification ‘[u]nless the trust instrument provides otherwise’ indicates that if any modification method is specified in the trust, that method must be used to amend the… Read More