The trustee shall be accountable to the beneficiary for the trust property. A violation by the trustee of any duty that the trustee owes the beneficiary shall be a breach of trust.
(Code 1981, §53-12-300, enacted by Ga. L. 2010, p. 579, § 1/SB 131.)
Cross references.- Registration of securities generally, § 10-5-20 et seq.
Law reviews.- For article, "The Georgia Trust Act," 28 Ga. St. B.J. 95 (1991).
JUDICIAL DECISIONS
Trustee properly found to have breached fiduciary duty.
- It was not an abuse of discretion to deny a new trial motion brought by a trustee who was found to have breached the trustee's fiduciary duty to trust beneficiaries by making distributions to a co-trustee under a trust's encroachment provision because the trustee breached the trustee's duty to protect the trust corpus as: (1) the trustee inconsistently required the co-trustee to provide supporting evidence for corpus distributions and let the co-trustee exceed an allotted budget; and (2) the beneficiaries were damaged by the resulting reduction in trust corpus. Reliance Trust Co. v. Candler, 315 Ga. App. 495, 726 S.E.2d 636 (2012).
Breach of trust issue for jury.
- In a trust beneficiary's action against a co-trustee and others, issues of fact remained as to the beneficiary's claims for breach of fiduciary duty arising out of the sale of a trust asset for less than fair market value and failure to account for a commission owed on the sale, rendering summary judgment on these claims improper. Kahn v. Britt, 330 Ga. App. 377, 765 S.E.2d 446 (2014).
In a beneficiary's claims against a trustee and the trust's attorneys, issues of fact remained as to the trustee's and attorneys' duties surrounding the sale of the trust's cattle ranch at auction because no appraisal was done, the sale was only run for seven weeks, the trustee believed the land was worth more than the price obtained, and the trustee failed to consider a commission due to a real estate agent. Kahn v. Britt, 330 Ga. App. 377, 765 S.E.2d 446 (2014).
Sale of trust asset to a co-trustee through a straw man.
- Because there were genuine issues as to whether trustees fraudulently concealed their breach of fiduciary duty in selling the principal trust asset to a co-trustee at a discount through a straw man in 1979, tolling the statute of limitations, and whether the beneficiaries exercised diligence in discovering the fraud, summary judgment was improper. Smith v. SunTrust Bank, 325 Ga. App. 531, 754 S.E.2d 117 (2014).
RESEARCH REFERENCES
ALR.
- Liability of trustee or other fiduciary for loss on investment as affected by the fact that it was taken in his own name without indication of fiduciary capacity, 150 A.L.R. 805.