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[Music] in this video i want to discuss what happens if one of the beneficiaries refuses to give a waiver of accounting a lot of times a trustee will be willing to make a final distribution out to all the beneficiaries but they want the beneficiaries to waive a formal accounting so that they don't have to do a formal accounting and maybe you have multiple beneficiaries let's say we have four beneficiaries and three of them are perfectly fine waiving and accounting they don't think that an accounting is required they don't want to pay to have the trustee prepare it they're perfectly happy just waiving the accounting but maybe you have one beneficiary who refuses so what's going to happen then well probably what's going to happen and what a good trustee would do is they'd say okay well i'll go ahead and make a partial distribution so i'm going to give all of you as much money as i can but i'm going to hold something back in reserve so that i can pay to prepare a formal accounting and then i'm probably going to file that formal accounting with the court and seek court approval because once the court approves an accounting it's pretty much a done deal nobody can come back at a later date and try to sue the trustee so you kind of have a choice as a beneficiary you can do the cheap way out but it's the way where you're not going to be as informed and waving accounting or you can do the more expensive way out because it's good you have to pay the trustee to prepare the accounting or their cpa to prepare the accounting but you're going to be fully informed i'm not saying that one way is better than another every case is different obviously if you have a trustee who has been very transparent with you giving you account statements talk to you about everything maybe waiving and accounting is is the better option if you have a trustee who's been very secretive refuses to share information i don't think i would wave an accounting in that case so every case is a little different but it can be very frustrating when you have a majority of beneficiaries who just want to wrap things up and move on and you have one person who's kind of a little bit more difficult but that person's entitled to be difficult and so the trustee really should just get on with it do the accounting file it with the court and move along but what the trustee shouldn't do and this is really important for the other beneficiaries who are willing to waive the accounting the trustee shouldn't just keep all the money and trust until the accounting is approved trustees do not have the right to do that they're supposed to make distributions so go ahead and distribute as much money as you can the only thing the trustees should be holding back is what we call a reasonable reserve so how much is it going to take to prepare this accounting and get court approval of it you know maybe it's 10 20 30 000 you know the trustee can hold back maybe fifty thousand dollars but should distribute the rest or if it's a large estate let's say it's a 10 million dollar estate you know the trustee can hold back 250 000 and distribute the rest but the trustee should not be holding an entire 10 million hostage in order to go to court and get an accounting approved and that does happen sometimes but i would caution any trustee against that because it's unreasonable it's going to make you look terrible and plus it's going to very much anger the beneficiaries just get the money out get it in their hands and you're going to look very good in front of the court you're going to look far more reasonable in front of the court and you're probably going to be able to get this trust administration wrapped up a lot easier and faster albertson and davidson is here to help you fight for your inheritance check out aldavlaw.com for our complete library of helpful legal videos and articles from your favorite california trust and will litigation law firm albertson and davidson llp