O.C.G.A.
Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.
A trustee shall not be under any duty to investigate the resources of any beneficiary when determining whether to distribute trust property to such beneficiary.
History
Code 1981, § 53-12-245, enacted by Ga. L. 2010, p. 579, § 1/SB 131.
Annotations
JUDICIAL DECISIONS Resources of beneficiary not required to be considered. - In an appeal of an order granting a trustees’ motion for summary judgment on a claim for breach of trust and breach of fiduciary duty, the court of appeals proceeded under the Revised Georgia Trust Code, O.C.G.A. § 53-12-1 et seq., as supplemented by the common law because even assuming that past distributions under the trust amounted to vested rights, the plaintiff could not show that the Revised Trust
Code created any new trustees’ obligations or impaired those rights in any relevant way; although the Revised Trust Code did not require a trustee to consider the resources of any beneficiary when determining whether to distribute trust property, O.C.G.A. § 53-12-245, the trust instrument affirmatively directed the trustees to do so. McPherson v. McPherson, 307 Ga. App. 548, 705 S.E.2d 314 (2011).
Notes of Decisions
Cited in
2
cases (
1 in the last 5 years), 2011–2025 · leading case:
McPherson v. McPherson, 705 S.E.2d 314 (Ga. Ct. App. 2011).
McPherson v. McPherson, 705 S.E.2d 314 (Ga. Ct. App. 2011).
· cites it 4× “Although the Revised Trust Code does not require a trustee to consider “the resources of any beneficiary when determining whether to distribute trust property,” OCGA § 53-12-245, the trust instrument before us affirmatively directs the trustees to do so, with this and other…”
Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Rose McNeill (Ga. Ct. App. 2025).
· cites it 2× “And where a trust has successive beneficiaries, “[e]xcept to the extent that the governing trust instrument clearly manifests an intention that the trustee shall or may favor one or more of the beneficiaries, a trustee shall administer a trust impartially based on what is fair…”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the
Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and
treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.