ABSTRACT
Supposedly, trusts transmit wealth privately and only require judicial intervention if they spark litigation. However, we assembled a dataset of 1,431 trust filings from a seven year period in San Francisco Superior Court and found that 971 (68%) did not involve a dispute. This Article describes why these uncontested trusts ended up in the judicial system. It reveals that the culprits include human error, changed circumstances, and the need to protect vulnerable parties. It also explores the implications of our data for how we think about trusts and ways to keep uncontested trusts out of court.
Ryan, Christopher and Horton, David and Weisbord, Reid K, Uncontested Trusts in Court (October 3, 2025), Indiana Legal Studies Research Paper No 564; George Mason Law Review (forthcoming, 2025).
Leave a Reply