Notice, Information, and Beneficiary Communications at Inception

1. The trustee owes an affirmative duty to inform qualified beneficiaries of the existence of the trust and of the trustee's identity.
2. The duty to inform is separate from, and precedes, any duty to account or report.
3. Uniform Trust Code § 813 imposes specific triggering events with a 60-day statutory window.
4. The class of qualified beneficiaries — not every possible beneficiary — is the presumptive audience of statutory notice.
5. The duty to inform is a mandatory rule under UTC § 105(b)(8)–(9); it cannot be entirely eliminated by the settlor, though timing and scope may be modified within limits.
6. Silent-trust and quiet-trust statutes narrow the duty in some jurisdictions; the trustee must know which regime governs.
7. Revocable trusts suspend beneficiary information rights during the settlor's capacity; those rights vest on incapacity or death.
8. Failure to inform is itself a breach of trust and starts no limitations clock against the beneficiary.

Upon completing this chapter, the reader should be able to:

1. State the doctrinal foundation of the trustee's duty to inform and its relationship to the fiduciary character of the office.
2. Identify the qualified beneficiaries entitled to statutory notice under UTC § 103(13).
3. Apply UTC § 813(b) to determine which notices are required, to whom, and within what statutory windows.
4. Distinguish the mandatory core of the duty to inform from provisions the settlor may vary by the terms of the trust.
5. Recognize the operation and limits of silent-trust and quiet-trust statutes.
6. Analyze the special rule governing revocable trusts during the settlor's capacity under UTC § 603.
7. Identify remedies for breach of the duty to inform and the consequences for limitations, laches, and virtual-representation defenses.
8. Construct a defensible first-ninety-day communications protocol suitable for individual, corporate, and directed trusteeships.

• Uniform Trust Code §§ 103(13), 105(b)(8)–(9), 603, 813(a)–(e).
• Restatement (Third) of Trusts §§ 82, 83.
• Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 50 (discretion) — cross-reference.
• Uniform Directed Trust Act (2017) §§ 10, 11 (allocation of information duties).
• Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (2015) §§ 7, 15 (electronic communications).
• N.Y. Est. Powers & Trusts Law § 11-1.7; N.Y. Surr. Ct. Proc. Act § 2309.
• Cal. Prob. Code §§ 16060–16069, 16061.7, 16062.
• 12 Del. C. §§ 3303, 3315, 3339 (Delaware silent-trust and information provisions).
• Tex. Prop. Code § 113.151.
• Fla. Stat. §§ 736.0105, 736.0813.
• S.C. Code Ann. § 62-7-813 (illustrative UTC-parallel enactment).
• Mo. Rev. Stat. § 456.4-419 (illustrative silent-trust provision).

• George Gleason Bogert, George Taylor Bogert & Amy Morris Hess, The Law of Trusts and Trustees (3d ed. & Supp.) §§ 961–965.
• Austin Wakeman Scott, William Franklin Fratcher & Mark L. Ascher, Scott and Ascher on Trusts (5th ed.) §§ 17.5, 82.1–82.3.
• Restatement (Third) of Trusts, Reporter's Notes to §§ 82, 83.
• John H. Langbein, Mandatory Rules in the Law of Trusts, 98 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1105 (2004).
• Robert Whitman, Fiduciary Duties in Trust: The Duty to Inform Beneficiaries, 27 ACTEC J. 175 (2001).
• Frances H. Foster, Trust Privacy, 93 Cornell L. Rev. 555 (2008) — critical perspective on silent-trust statutes.

Chapter 1 established the doctrinal moment at which trust administration begins. This chapter takes up the first substantive duty that runs from acceptance forward: the duty to inform. It is a duty owed to persons — the beneficiaries — whose equitable interests would be practically unenforceable without it. The trustee's obligation to communicate is not merely instrumental to accounting or to distribution; it is a constitutive feature of trusteeship itself. Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 82; UTC § 813.

The Restatement (Third) states the principle in unqualified terms: a trustee owes beneficiaries an affirmative duty to keep them reasonably informed of the trust and its administration. Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 82(1). The affirmative character of the duty is doctrinally significant. The trustee need not wait for beneficiaries to ask; the office itself carries the initiative. That principle explains why the duty is triggered by objective events — creation, acceptance, changes in trusteeship — rather than by beneficiary demand.

The equitable foundation is older than the statute. Chancery long recognized that equitable interests would be nugatory if their holders could be kept in ignorance of them. See Bogert §§ 961–962; Scott & Ascher § 82.1. The trustee-beneficiary relationship is a relation of confidence, and confidence requires disclosure. The Uniform Trust Code did not create the duty; it codified, refined, and made administrable a duty long enforced in equity.

The duty to inform is doctrinally distinct from the duty to account, though the two are frequently conflated. To inform is to communicate the existence, terms, and administration of the trust; to account is to render a formal statement of receipts, disbursements, and holdings. UTC § 813(a) captures the former ("keep the qualified beneficiaries . . . reasonably informed about the administration of the trust and of the material facts necessary for them to protect their interests"); UTC § 813(c) governs the latter (the annual report).

The distinction matters at inception. On acceptance, no account can yet be rendered — no administration has occurred. But the duty to inform is fully operative from the moment acceptance is complete. The trustee must therefore be capable of communicating with beneficiaries before any conventional accounting is possible. That is why the statutory 60-day windows of UTC § 813(b) are inception-focused: they concern events (acceptance, change of trustee, creation of an irrevocable trust) rather than reporting cycles.

The 2018 Uniform Fiduciary Income and Principal Act, § 201 comment, reinforces the point in a related context: information rights are logically antecedent to accounting rights, because a beneficiary who does not know she is a beneficiary cannot audit an account. The remainder of this chapter builds on that insight.

The Uniform Trust Code's most important innovation in the law of information is the concept of the qualified beneficiary. UTC § 103(13) defines the class as a beneficiary who, on the date the qualification is determined, either (A) is a distributee or permissible distributee of trust income or principal; (B) would be a distributee or permissible distributee of trust income or principal if the interests of the distributees described in subparagraph (A) terminated on that date without causing the trust to terminate; or (C) would be a distributee or permissible distributee if the trust terminated on that date.

The definition is structural. It fixes attention on those beneficiaries whose interests are most immediate: current takers and the next-in-line contingent takers. The class is calibrated to serve the trustee's information duties without conscripting every remote remainder or possible object of a discretionary power. UTC § 103 cmt.

The class is time-dependent. Because subparagraphs (A)–(C) fix the date of qualification, the class of qualified beneficiaries can change as circumstances change: a death, a birth, a lapse of a power, or a distribution that exhausts a share may all reconfigure the class. The trustee must therefore keep her records of the class current, and must re-run the § 103(13) analysis whenever a triggering event occurs.

The qualified-beneficiary concept limits the audience of statutory notice but does not exhaust the trustee's information duties. Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 82 speaks in the broader language of "beneficiaries," without the qualification. Where common-law duties survive alongside a UTC enactment (as UTC § 106 confirms they do), a beneficiary who is not qualified may still hold information rights sufficient to protect her interests, at least where the trustee has actual knowledge of the beneficiary's identity and where the information sought is genuinely necessary to safeguard her interest.

Bogert § 962 identifies the practical rule: the trustee must respond to reasonable requests for information from any beneficiary whose interest could be materially affected by the requested information, subject to the terms of the trust and any applicable silent-trust regime. The § 103(13) class defines whom the trustee must proactively notify; the broader class of beneficiaries defines whom the trustee must, on request, responsively inform.

UTC § 813 organizes the duty to inform in a five-part structure: (a) the general standard; (b) the notice-triggering events; (c) the annual report; (d) the beneficiary's right to a copy of the trust instrument; and (e) the settlor's power to waive certain aspects of the duty. Each subsection performs a distinct function, and the trustee's compliance analysis should track them separately.

Subsection (a) — general standard. The trustee shall keep the qualified beneficiaries reasonably informed about the administration of the trust and of the material facts necessary for them to protect their interests. Unless unreasonable under the circumstances, a trustee shall promptly respond to a beneficiary's request for information related to the administration of the trust. This subsection is the operative core; it applies at all times.

Subsection (b) — statutory notices. Within 60 days: (1) notify qualified beneficiaries of the existence of an irrevocable trust upon its creation or upon a formerly revocable trust becoming irrevocable; (2) provide notice of the trustee's acceptance and of the trustee's name, address, and telephone number; and (3) notify qualified beneficiaries of any change in the method or rate of the trustee's compensation. UTC § 813(b)(1)–(3).

Subsection (c) — annual report. The trustee shall send to distributees, and to other qualified beneficiaries who request it, at least annually and at the termination of the trust, a report of the trust property, liabilities, receipts, and disbursements, including the source and amount of the trustee's compensation, a listing of the trust assets and, if feasible, their respective market values. This is the accounting duty; it lives alongside, not within, the duty to inform.

Subsection (d) — copy of the instrument. Upon request of a qualified beneficiary, the trustee shall promptly furnish a copy of the trust instrument. Some jurisdictions modify this obligation for silent trusts and for pour-over provisions in wills; the trustee must check enacting-state law.

Subsection (e) — settlor waiver. Subsection (e) confirms the settlor's power to waive certain requirements, but reads together with UTC § 105(b)(8)–(9), which preserves a mandatory core the settlor cannot displace.

The 60-day windows of § 813(b) are the most operationally important element of the duty at inception. They are triggered by discrete, identifiable events, and each produces a specific communication obligation. The trustee who has accepted office in Chapter 1 must now execute these obligations in Chapter 2.

• § 813(b)(1): on creation of an irrevocable trust — or on a revocable trust becoming irrevocable (typically at the settlor's death or on loss of capacity) — notify the qualified beneficiaries of the trust's existence, the settlor's identity, the beneficiary's right to request a copy of the instrument, and the beneficiary's right to a trustee's report.
• § 813(b)(2): within 60 days after accepting the trusteeship, notify the qualified beneficiaries of the acceptance and of the trustee's name, address, and telephone number. This is the acceptance notice.
• § 813(b)(3): notify the qualified beneficiaries of any change in the method or rate of the trustee's compensation. The obligation continues throughout the administration and is triggered by the compensation change, not by the report cycle.

The windows are strict but administrable. Institutional practice consolidates § 813(b)(1) and § 813(b)(2) into a single opening communication when the two events coincide — as they typically do when a new trustee accepts office at the settlor's death.

UTC § 813(b) specifies the essential contents of the acceptance notice — the trustee's name, address, and telephone number. Good institutional practice adds elements that discharge § 813(a)'s general duty at the same time. A defensible acceptance notice ordinarily contains:

1. The identity of the trust (its name, date of instrument, and the settlor's name).
2. A statement that the trust is irrevocable or that a formerly revocable trust has become irrevocable, with the triggering event (§ 813(b)(1)).
3. The trustee's name, address, and telephone number, and — where applicable — email address (§ 813(b)(2)).
4. The beneficiary's right to request a copy of the trust instrument, with instructions for making the request (§ 813(d)).
5. The beneficiary's right to receive trustee's reports and the reporting cycle the trustee intends to observe (§ 813(c)).
6. A statement of any limitations period the enacting state imposes on the beneficiary's right to challenge the trust's validity or a trustee's action following notice (see, e.g., Cal. Prob. Code § 16061.7(h)).
7. The trustee's method and rate of compensation, so that any later change is a genuine "change" for § 813(b)(3) purposes.

The acceptance notice is not a place for legal argument. Its function is disclosure, not advocacy. Where the trustee anticipates contest — of the will, of the trust, of the trustee's authority — the acceptance notice should still be neutral in tone, with any positional statement reserved for separate correspondence prepared with counsel.

Although this chapter concerns inception, the trustee cannot defer the design of her annual-report format until the first anniversary. UTC § 813(c) requires that the report state, at minimum, (i) the trust property, (ii) liabilities, (iii) receipts and disbursements (including the source and amount of the trustee's compensation), and (iv) a listing of trust assets and, if feasible, their respective market values.

The Restatement (Third) treats the annual report as the primary vehicle by which the general duty to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed is discharged over time. Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 83 cmt. c. The trustee should therefore design the report at the start of administration, so that the recordkeeping and valuation systems established under Chapter 1 (inventory, custody, and valuation of trust assets) produce data in a format directly usable in the § 813(c) report.

In jurisdictions that have not enacted the Uniform Trust Code — and in UTC states, on any point where the statute is silent — Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 82 supplies the operative rule. Section 82(1) requires the trustee to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed of the existence of the trust, the beneficiary's rights under it, the trust's terms, and the trust's administration. Section 82(2) obliges the trustee to respond promptly to a beneficiary's reasonable request for information.

The common-law standard is more open-textured than UTC § 813 but reaches the same core. It is silent as to a 60-day window but implies a duty of reasonable promptness. It does not use the qualified-beneficiary construct but applies to all beneficiaries whose interests could be materially affected by the information. New York and other non-UTC jurisdictions still enforce a robust common-law duty to inform, reinforced by their surrogate's court procedure. See N.Y. Est. Powers & Trusts Law § 11-1.7; N.Y. Surr. Ct. Proc. Act § 2309.

The Uniform Trust Code makes the duty to inform partly mandatory. UTC § 105(b)(8) provides that the terms of the trust may not preclude the duty to notify qualified beneficiaries who have attained 25 years of age of the existence of an irrevocable trust and their right to request a trustee's report. UTC § 105(b)(9) preserves the duty to respond to the request of a qualified beneficiary of an irrevocable trust for a trustee's report and for other information reasonably related to the administration of the trust.

The interplay between § 105 and § 813 defines the modifiable and non-modifiable sides of the duty. A settlor may — within limits — waive or narrow the specific mechanics of § 813 (for example, by directing that reports be furnished less frequently, or by delaying notice for younger beneficiaries), but may not eliminate the core rights preserved by § 105(b)(8)–(9). See UTC § 105 cmt.; Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 82 cmt. a.

This mandatory-versus-default distinction is a durable feature of the Uniform Trust Code. Professor Langbein has argued that the mandatory core is the doctrinal expression of what makes a trust a trust rather than a nominee arrangement: the beneficiary's practical ability to enforce her rights. See Langbein, Mandatory Rules in the Law of Trusts, 98 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1105 (2004). The counter-position, developed principally in Delaware, is treated below.

Several jurisdictions have enacted statutes permitting the settlor to displace ordinary information rights for a defined period — commonly the settlor's life, or a fixed number of years after creation, or until a beneficiary attains a specified age. Delaware is the paradigmatic example: 12 Del. C. § 3303(a) authorizes the settlor to alter the fiduciary duties otherwise applicable, and § 3339 permits the terms of the trust to limit or eliminate the trustee's duty to inform. See also Mo. Rev. Stat. § 456.4-419; and comparable provisions in South Dakota, Nevada, and Tennessee.

Silent-trust statutes are controversial. Proponents emphasize settlor autonomy and the protection of family privacy — particularly where beneficiaries are young or where premature knowledge of the trust could be socially destabilizing. See Foster, Trust Privacy, 93 Cornell L. Rev. 555 (2008) (surveying, and criticizing, the movement). Opponents argue that the beneficiary's inability to know of the trust's existence effectively suspends the trust's enforceability — an outcome hard to reconcile with the equitable foundations of trusteeship.

Whatever the theoretical merits, the operational rule is straightforward: the trustee must know whether the governing law permits silent-trust arrangements, whether the instrument invokes them, and whether the statutory conditions are satisfied. The trustee cannot rely on an instrument's silent-trust direction if the governing law does not authorize it; nor can the trustee assume that a silent-trust direction survives changes in situs. See Chapter 28 (Situs, Choice of Law, and Cross-Border Administration).

UTC § 603(a) provides that, while a trust is revocable, the rights of the beneficiaries are subject to the control of, and the duties of the trustee are owed exclusively to, the settlor. During revocability, the trustee owes no direct duty to inform the beneficiaries; her duty to inform runs to the settlor. Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 74 cmt. c.

The rule is a substantial departure from ordinary trust doctrine but coheres with the revocable-trust's functional role as a will substitute. The beneficiaries of a revocable trust have contingent, defeasible interests during the settlor's life; the settlor retains full economic ownership. UTC § 603 recognizes that fact and organizes the duty of information around it.

The rule reverses on incapacity or death. When a settlor loses capacity — as determined by the terms of the trust or by applicable state law — the ordinary information duties revive, at least to the extent the trust becomes irrevocable in fact. On the settlor's death, the trust becomes irrevocable as a matter of law, and the acceptance-notice regime of § 813(b) engages in the ordinary way. See UTC § 603 cmt.; Cal. Prob. Code § 16069(a).

Two operational points follow. First, the trustee of a revocable trust must be alert to the moment of transition: incapacity determinations and death are the events that engage the duty to inform. Second, the trustee should not, during the settlor's life, cultivate expectations in beneficiaries that would prejudice the settlor's revocation rights; but neither may the trustee mislead beneficiaries who make direct inquiry. The proper response to a beneficiary inquiry during revocability is to state, truthfully, that the trust is revocable and that information about revocable trusts is furnished only to the settlor.

A qualified beneficiary who has received the acceptance notice may waive her right to receive further information — most typically, the annual report under § 813(c). UTC § 813(a) contemplates waiver by its terms; § 813 cmt. discusses the practice. A waiver is effective only as to the beneficiary who executes it, is revocable prospectively, and must be based on adequate information: a waiver executed by a beneficiary who does not know of the trust's existence is no waiver at all.

A waiver is not the equivalent of a release. A release settles claims for a defined period; a waiver disclaims the right to receive information going forward. Institutional trustees typically request both — a release for the reporting period just concluded, and a prospective waiver for future reports — but a beneficiary may consent to one without the other. See Bogert § 964; Scott & Ascher § 82.3.

Uniform Trust Code Article 3 (§§ 301–305) supplies the doctrine of virtual representation. A representative — a parent, a guardian ad litem, or the holder of a substantially identical interest — may receive notice on behalf of a minor, unborn, or otherwise unascertained beneficiary, and may consent, release, or ratify on that beneficiary's behalf. UTC §§ 302–304.

Virtual representation is a functional necessity at inception. Without it, the trustee could not deliver a § 813(b) notice to a class that includes unborn or unascertained members, and no consent from the qualified-beneficiary class could bind the future. The doctrine is subject to a controlling limitation: the representative may not act on behalf of the represented person if a conflict of interest exists between them. UTC § 305.

In practice, the trustee should identify the representative for each non-sui-juris beneficiary at the time of acceptance, deliver the § 813(b) notice to the representative, and document the representative's authority. Where no natural representative exists, the trustee should seek appointment of a guardian ad litem — an inception-stage step that often avoids litigation later.

In a directed trust, the trustee's information duties do not exhaust the field. The Uniform Directed Trust Act (2017) § 10 imposes on the trust director duties comparable to those of a trustee, including the duty to inform, to the extent of the director's exercised or exercisable powers. UDTA § 11 preserves the directed trustee's own information duties as to matters within her administrative sphere.

The practical consequence is a doctrine of allocated information duties. In a directed trust where an investment director controls investments, the director owes qualified beneficiaries information duties as to investment matters; the trustee's information duties focus on custody, distribution, and administration. The trustee must nevertheless deliver the § 813(b) acceptance notice — she is the officer of the trust — and should identify the director and describe the director's role in the notice.

Chapter 23 treats directed-trust liability comprehensively. For the inception stage, the rule is that the trustee's acceptance notice must not overstate the trustee's authority: silence about a director's role, followed by later reliance on the director's actions, may prejudice beneficiaries and complicate the trustee's defenses.

Corporate and institutional trustees ordinarily discharge the duty to inform through structured protocols: an acceptance letter drawn from a template but tailored to the specific trust; a beneficiary-relations officer identified as the point of contact; an internal calendaring system that fixes § 813(b) deadlines on acceptance; and an integrated recordkeeping system that produces § 813(c) reports on a periodic cycle.

The institutional model produces two operational benefits and one recurring risk. The benefits are consistency and auditability: statutory obligations discharged through a documented protocol are easier to defend later. The risk is form over substance: a template notice that fails to disclose material features specific to the trust may satisfy the statute's minimum content but breach the general duty under § 813(a). Institutional practice must therefore include a substantive review of the template output for each trust at inception.

Nothing in UTC § 813 requires delivery by mail. Where the enacting-state's Uniform Electronic Transactions Act enactment permits electronic delivery, or where the trust instrument authorizes it, notices may be delivered by email or through a secure trust portal. The trustee must, however, obtain evidence of receipt sufficient to establish compliance with § 813(b)'s 60-day windows, and must retain that evidence in the trust records.

The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (2015) intersects the duty to inform in a distinct way. RUFADAA § 7 permits a user to authorize disclosure of the content of electronic communications through an online tool; § 15 authorizes a fiduciary's access to digital assets subject to the user's disclosed preferences and to the terms of the trust. The trustee at inception should identify digital assets held by the trust or accessible through it, and should treat the § 813(b) notice regime as extending to information about those assets — not merely to the trust's financial holdings.

Breach of the duty to inform is itself a breach of trust. UTC § 1001 makes the ordinary remedial arsenal available: compel performance, enjoin further breach, compel accounting, reduce or deny compensation, remove the trustee, and — where a specific loss can be traced to the failure to inform — surcharge the trustee for damages. Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 100 cmt. b treats failure to inform as a discrete wrong for which non-monetary remedies are frequently the most apt.

The most consequential downstream effect of a failure to inform is on limitations. UTC § 1005 organizes the trust-limitations regime around adequate disclosure: a one-year limitations period runs against a beneficiary who has been sent a report that adequately discloses the existence of a claim; a longer default period runs where no such report has issued. A trustee who has failed to satisfy § 813 cannot invoke the short limitations period; her failure to inform preserves the beneficiary's right to challenge.

The California analogue in Prob. Code § 16061.7(h) illustrates the same architecture: the 120-day limitations period bars only a beneficiary who has received the statutorily prescribed notice with the statutorily prescribed contents. The lesson is uniform: the duty to inform is not merely a communications obligation; it is a limitations-triggering event.

A successor trustee who has accepted office (see Chapter 1) becomes subject to § 813 from the date of her acceptance. Her acceptance notice must go out within 60 days of that date, independently of any notice given by the predecessor. UTC § 813 cmt.

The successor trustee's duty to inform includes an inquiry duty: to the extent she has notice of possible wrongs by her predecessor material to beneficiaries' protection, she must (in the ordinary case) inform qualified beneficiaries of what she knows, subject to the timing and scope constraints of § 813. This information duty is a doctrinal companion to the successor's duty of inquiry itself, treated at Chapter 3.

This chapter closes, as Chapter 1 did, with a practical framework. The framework is not a substitute for statutory analysis; it is a checklist that ensures the statutory analysis has been performed in the operational order the statute assumes.

1. Days 1–7: confirm acceptance (see Chapter 1); identify the governing UTC or non-UTC regime; determine whether the trust is irrevocable and, if revocable, whether a triggering event has occurred.
2. Days 7–14: run the qualified-beneficiary schedule under § 103(13); identify representatives under UTC Article 3; identify any silent-trust or quiet-trust provisions and confirm their statutory validity.
3. Days 14–30: draft the acceptance notice using the § 2.7 checklist; obtain counsel review; identify method of delivery and evidence of receipt.
4. Days 30–45: deliver the § 813(b)(1) and § 813(b)(2) notices; document delivery and receipt; open the beneficiary-relations file.
5. Days 45–60: calendar the § 813(c) reporting cycle; design the report format so that inventory (Chapter 1) feeds directly into it; document any beneficiary waiver of reports under § 813(a).
6. Days 60–75: respond to any beneficiary requests for the trust instrument under § 813(d) and for other information under § 813(a); document responses.
7. Days 75–90: for directed trusts, confirm the director has satisfied her information duties under UDTA § 10; for corporate trustees, complete the institutional protocol audit.

The framework is deliberately conservative. A trustee who has moved through these steps within 90 days of acceptance has discharged her statutory obligations, created a defensible record, and prepared the administration for the substantive duties that Parts VI and VII of Volume II will develop.

The duty to inform is the first substantive duty of trust administration. It runs from the moment of acceptance treated in Chapter 1. It is codified in Uniform Trust Code § 813, grounded in Restatement (Third) of Trusts § 82, and preserved in a mandatory core by UTC § 105(b)(8)–(9). It varies at the margins — narrowed by silent-trust statutes in some jurisdictions, suspended by revocability under UTC § 603, modulated by directed-trust and institutional structures — but its center holds: a beneficiary who is entitled to be informed must be informed.

Chapter 3 turns to the trustee's initial substantive engagement with the trust property itself: marshaling the trust estate, taking possession, and identifying the trustee's opening custodial obligations. The information framework of Chapter 2 supports that engagement by ensuring that everyone with a legitimate interest in the property is on notice of who now holds it, on what terms, and with what accountability.

• Uniform Trust Code §§ 103(13), 105, 603, 813 (with official comments).
• Restatement (Third) of Trusts §§ 82, 83.
• George Gleason Bogert et al., The Law of Trusts and Trustees §§ 961–965.
• Scott and Ascher on Trusts §§ 17.5, 82.1–82.3.
• Uniform Directed Trust Act §§ 10, 11.
• Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act §§ 7, 15.
• John H. Langbein, Mandatory Rules in the Law of Trusts, 98 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1105 (2004).
• Frances H. Foster, Trust Privacy, 93 Cornell L. Rev. 555 (2008).