## Facts

- Glenn and Elsa Lerner created a revocable trust in 2005 naming themselves as trustees.
- The trust provided that, upon Elsa’s death, Glenn would become sole trustee and the trust estate would be divided into three subtrusts (Family, Marital, and Survivor’s).
- The trust gave Glenn broad rights as surviving spouse and trustee, including receipt of income and discretion to distribute principal for his benefit.
- Elsa died in 2006; her daughters, Carin Salter and Jennifer Segal, became contingent remainder beneficiaries entitled to most remaining trust assets upon Glenn’s death.
- The trust included (1) a waiver of “reports or accounts otherwise required” by the Probate Code “to the fullest extent of the law,” and (2) a no-contest clause disinheriting anyone who contests a trust provision.
- Salter and Segal sought information about trust administration, including whether the required subtrusts had been created and funded and what trust resources Glenn was using.
- Before filing their contemplated petition to compel information, Salter and Segal filed a former Probate Code § 21320 “safe-harbor” petition seeking an advance ruling that the contemplated filing would not trigger the no-contest clause.

## Issues

1. Whether a beneficiary’s proposed petition to compel information about trust administration constitutes a “contest” that triggers a trust’s no-contest clause.
2. Whether a trust’s waiver of reports and accountings can eliminate the trustee’s statutory duty to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed under Probate Code § 16060.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the probate court’s order granting safe-harbor relief.
- The court held the proposed petition would not violate the no-contest clause because it sought only to enforce the trustee’s statutory duty to provide reasonable information about trust administration.
- The court concluded the trustee’s core informational duties under Probate Code § 16060 are nonwaivable and cannot be negated by trust language purporting to waive reporting “to the fullest extent of the law.”
- The court construed the no-contest clause narrowly and declined to treat an information-enforcement petition as an attack on the trust’s dispositive provisions.

## Legal Principles

- No-contest clauses are strictly construed because they impose forfeiture; a filing is not treated as a “contest” unless it plainly falls within the clause’s scope.
- A trustee has a statutory duty under Probate Code § 16060 to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed about the trust and its administration.
- Trust provisions waiving reports or accountings operate, at most, within statutory limits; they cannot eliminate the nonwaivable minimum duty to provide reasonable information.
- Contingent remainder beneficiaries hold sufficient beneficial interests to seek reasonable information necessary to protect their interests and to obtain judicial enforcement of the trustee’s informational duties.

## Conclusion

A petition limited to compelling reasonable information about trust administration enforces the trustee’s nonwaivable statutory duties and does not trigger a trust no-contest clause, even where the trust attempts to waive reporting obligations to the fullest extent allowed by law.


Salter v. Lerner, 176 Cal. App. 4th 1184 (Cal. Ct. App. 2009)