Florida Statute 736.0704
“Vacancy in trusteeship; appointment of successor”
What it means
A vacancy occurs when a named trustee declines, cannot be identified or does not exist, resigns, is disqualified or removed, dies, or is adjudicated incapacitated. If cotrustees remain in office, the vacancy need not be filled; if no trustee remains, it must be.
For a noncharitable trust the order of priority is fixed: the person named or designated in the trust; then a person appointed by unanimous agreement of the qualified beneficiaries; then a person appointed by the court. Charitable trusts substitute the charitable organizations designated to receive distributions. And the court may add a trustee or special fiduciary whenever administration requires one — vacancy or not.
- Six triggers: declination, a designee who cannot be identified or does not exist, resignation, disqualification or removal, death, adjudicated incapacity.
- With a cotrustee still serving, filling the seat is optional; with no remaining trustee, filling it is mandatory.
- Noncharitable priority: trust-designated successor → unanimous qualified-beneficiary appointment → court appointment.
- Charitable priority runs through the charitable organizations expressly designated to receive distributions.
- The court may appoint an additional trustee or special fiduciary whenever necessary for administration, even without a vacancy.
How it plays out
Vacancies mostly reach us when a trust has outlived everyone it named. The statute's ladder keeps that from becoming a courtroom problem: if the qualified beneficiaries — all of them — agree on a successor, no judge is involved. Unanimity is the catch; one holdout turns the appointment into a petition. We draft around the section where we can, naming a deep bench of successors and a mechanism for appointing more, because even a friendly court proceeding costs more than a paragraph of drafting.
Questions people ask
