Also known as: trust distributions · trust distrib
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A payment or transfer of cash or other property from a trust to a beneficiary.
Tanner Thompson serves as trustee of a family trust holding investment assets for his niece Tiffany Torres. After Tanner improperly sells trust securities at a loss and diverts proceeds, the court measures damages by the amount needed to restore both the remaining trust property and the distributions Tiffany would have received absent the breach. Tiffany therefore obtains a judgment that replenishes the trust corpus and compensates for the missed payments.
Theresa Tucker is the trustee of a trust created for her granddaughter Tyler Taylor that conditions outright distribution of principal on the beneficiary reaching age thirty-five. Tyler, now twenty-eight and facing significant medical expenses, petitions for early release of funds. The court denies the request, preserving the settlors' requirement of demonstrated maturity before any principal distribution occurs.
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The court must consider the distributions as part of the child's own financial resources. Those payments reduce the amount of support the parent must provide but do not eliminate the parent's underlying duty. The trust principal that remains inaccessible until a later age is not counted as a current resource.
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No. Any contractual term that attempts to cap or eliminate a child's independent right to support is unenforceable as against public policy. The court must still determine support based on both parents' actual resources and the child's needs.
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The trustee must restore the trust property and the distributions to the amounts they would have reached had the breach never occurred. This amount is compared with any profit the trustee personally gained, and the beneficiary receives the greater of the two figures.
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…plan, as defined in s. 766.01(4)(a), or an individual retirement account; and property acquired by right of survivorship, by a trust distribution, by bequest or inheritance or by a payable on death or a transfer on death arrangement under ch. 705. 3. With funds acquired in a manner provided in subd. 1. or 2. Wis. Stat. §…