What to Do When Your Trustee Won't Show You the Numbers in Texas

Sandra Okafor had been patient. When her mother died in the spring of 2024 and left behind a revocable living trust naming Sandra's older brother Michael as successor trustee, Sandra told herself it would take time. Michael was a busy man — a commercial real estate broker in Frisco with two kids and a demanding calendar. The trust held the family home in Allen, a $340,000 brokerage account, and a modest savings balance. There was nothing complicated about it.

By the summer of 2026, Sandra had received zero statements. No inventory of what had come into the trust. No record of what had left it. No explanation of whether the brokerage account still held $340,000 or something considerably less. She had texted Michael twice and called him once. He told her everything was fine and he'd get something together. He never did.

Sandra did what most people in her position do: she started to wonder what a lawyer would cost her, compared it to the uncertainty of what was actually in the trust, and began talking herself out of doing anything at all. "I don't want to make it worse," she told a friend. "And I can't afford to fight him if he pushes back."

What Sandra didn't know — what almost no one in her position knows — is that Texas law had already decided who would pay for any fight she started. And the answer was not Sandra.

The Assumption That Costs Beneficiaries Everything

In estate disputes involving trusts, the most powerful weapon available to a trustee who doesn't want to be accountable is inertia. If the trustee simply does nothing — sends no statements, answers no calls, produces no records — most beneficiaries will eventually conclude that fighting back isn't worth the personal cost. The trustee outlasts them through silence.

This assumption — that a beneficiary who forces the issue absorbs all the legal risk personally — is the assumption that Texas Property Code § 113.151 was designed to dismantle. It does so in a single, consequential sentence.

When a trustee refuses to account after receiving a proper written demand, and the beneficiary is forced to go to court to compel them, the court may award the beneficiary's reasonable and necessary attorney's fees against the trustee. Not against the trust. Against the trustee personally.

The mechanism changes the entire economic structure of the dispute. The trustee who has been counting on the beneficiary's reluctance to spend their own money is suddenly facing personal financial exposure. And the beneficiary who walked away from the fight because they couldn't afford it may be able to pursue it at the trustee's expense.

How the Written Demand Works

Texas Property Code § 113.151(a) gives every trust beneficiary the right to demand a written accounting from the trustee. The demand must be in writing — a text message or a verbal request does not start the clock. Once the trustee receives the written demand, they have 90 days to deliver a written statement of accounts covering all transactions since the last accounting, or since the trust was created, whichever is later.

The 90-day deadline is not a suggestion. If the trustee fails or refuses to deliver the accounting within that window, the beneficiary may bring suit to compel one. At that point, the statute authorizes the court to require the trustee to pay all costs and reasonable and necessary attorney's fees incurred by the beneficiary in bringing the suit.

There is one built-in protection for trustees who have already provided recent statements: under § 113.151(b), a trustee is not required to account more than once every 12 months unless a court orders otherwise. A beneficiary who received a full accounting in January cannot demand another one in April. But a trustee who has provided nothing for two years — like Michael — has no such defense.

The written demand letter should be sent in a way that creates a verifiable record of receipt. Certified mail with return receipt is the clearest. Email can work if the trustee responds, but certified mail eliminates disputes about whether the demand was ever received and when. The letter itself does not need to be elaborate — it simply needs to identify the trust, establish your status as a beneficiary, and request the accounting in writing.

What a Complete Accounting Must Actually Contain

A trustee who responds to the written demand with a one-page summary of bank balances has not complied with the statute. Texas Property Code § 113.152 specifies what a complete trust accounting must include:

• An inventory of trust assets at the beginning of the accounting period — what was in the trust when the last accounting ended, or when the trust was created if no prior accounting exists.
• A record of all receipts during the period — every dollar that came into the trust: investment income, rental income, proceeds from any asset sales, distributions from retirement accounts, anything.
• A record of all disbursements and distributions — every dollar that went out, including trustee fees, attorney fees, property maintenance, taxes paid, and distributions to beneficiaries.
• An inventory of trust assets at the end of the accounting period — what remains in the trust now, with current valuations.

A trustee who produces a record that is technically responsive but omits any of these categories has not provided a compliant accounting. That gap matters, because a court evaluating a demand for attorney's fees will look at whether the trustee's response was adequate — and a partial or evasive accounting counts in the beneficiary's favor.

The accounting should also be consistent with any requirements in the trust document itself. Many well-drafted trusts include their own accounting provisions, specifying the frequency of statements and the format. When the trust language imposes a standard higher than § 113.152 — for example, requiring annual statements to all beneficiaries automatically — the trustee is bound by both the statute and the document. A beneficiary whose trust requires annual statements never had to make a written demand in the first place; the trustee was already in breach.

When the Trustee Still Won't Cooperate

Most of the time, a certified-mail demand letter — especially one drafted by or sent through an attorney — produces the accounting without litigation. A trustee who has simply been negligent about paperwork will often comply once they understand the statute and what non-compliance costs them. The 90-day clock, combined with the fee-shifting threat, changes the incentive structure immediately.

But some trustees will not comply. A trustee who has been mismanaging trust assets has an obvious reason to avoid documentation: a complete accounting would reveal it. This is the scenario where the gap between "trustee didn't send statements" and "trustee committed breach of fiduciary duty" becomes legally significant.

Texas Property Code § 113.082(a) allows a court to remove a trustee on several grounds, including breach of trust, material conflict of interest with the beneficiaries, and persistent failure to administer the trust effectively. A failure to account — especially a failure that continues through the 90-day demand period and into litigation — can serve as evidence of the broader pattern that supports a removal petition. The accounting demand and the removal petition can be filed together, or the demand can serve as the opening move that reveals whether removal is warranted.

The practical sequence often looks like this: written demand → trustee fails to respond within 90 days → suit to compel accounting → court-ordered production → documents reveal the full picture → beneficiary and counsel assess whether additional claims (surcharge, breach, removal) are warranted based on what the accounting shows. The accounting is not just about getting information. It is the discovery mechanism that makes every other trust-dispute claim possible.

A Word About Trustee Fees and Conflicts of Interest

One of the most common things beneficiaries find when they finally receive an accounting is trustee compensation they did not know about. Texas law permits trustees to receive reasonable compensation for their services unless the trust document provides otherwise. Tex. Prop. Code § 114.061. What counts as "reasonable" depends on the size and complexity of the trust, the time the trustee spent, and local professional rates.

An accounting that discloses years of trustee fees — paid by the trustee to themselves, from the trust — does not automatically represent wrongdoing. But it is information every beneficiary is entitled to have. A trustee who has been paying themselves at above-market rates, or who has been paying for personal expenses through the trust, cannot hide those transactions behind a wall of silence. The accounting requirement exists precisely to surface them.

A conflict of interest becomes legally significant when the trustee's personal financial interests diverge from the beneficiaries' interests in a way that affects how the trustee administers the trust. If Michael, the commercial real estate broker, steered the trust's investment in a property transaction in a way that benefited his own business relationships, that is the kind of conflict that § 113.082(a) addresses. You cannot evaluate whether a conflict exists until you can see the transactions. The accounting is the starting point.

What Sandra Did

Sandra sent the written demand by certified mail in July 2026. Michael received it on a Thursday. The following Monday, he called her — the first real conversation they had had about the trust in eight months — and said he'd been meaning to get everything together. He hired a CPA to prepare a proper accounting. He delivered it on day 87.

The accounting was not comfortable reading. The brokerage account had declined from $340,000 to $291,000 — partly from the market, but also from trustee fees Michael had paid himself without telling anyone, totaling $18,400 over two years. The fees were not obviously unreasonable for the services provided, but they were not documented in any contemporaneous record and had never been disclosed to Sandra or the other beneficiaries.

Sandra's attorney is now reviewing whether the compensation was within the range a court would consider reasonable given the trust's size and the services Michael actually rendered. That review is possible because Sandra sent a letter.

She did not pay for the CPA. She did not pay for Michael's revised record-keeping. She did not pay for the trustee's time spent producing what he should have produced two years ago. All of that cost fell on Michael — not because Sandra went to court, but because the statute made clear what going to court would mean for him.

What to Do If You're in Sandra's Position

If you are a trust beneficiary and your trustee has not provided an accounting — or has provided something so thin it cannot count as one — the first step is documenting what you have received (or haven't), then sending a proper written demand that starts the statutory clock. The demand letter is not aggressive; it is the legally required step that transforms your complaint into something the law can act on.

Before you send it, it is worth understanding what the trust document itself requires. The trust may impose accounting obligations the trustee has already violated, which changes the posture of any demand you make. An estate planning attorney who reviews the trust document, the history of communications with the trustee, and the beneficiary designations can tell you where you stand before you start the clock running.

The fee-shifting provision in § 113.151 does not mean litigation is free — it means the cost structure is different from what most people assume. If you go to court and the court awards your fees, the trustee pays them. But you need to evaluate the strength of your position before assuming every refusal to account will result in a fee award. The statute says the court "may" award fees, not that it must in every case. Courts do award them regularly when the trustee's non-compliance is clear-cut, but the outcome is never guaranteed without reviewing the specifics.

At WG Law, we work with Texas trust beneficiaries who have been left in the dark — people who have never received a statement, who received something that didn't look right, or who simply want to understand what their rights are before sending any demand. If your trustee has gone silent, you have more options than you may realize.

Request a consultation to speak with our team, or call us at 214-250-4407. Our McKinney office serves clients throughout Collin County, and our Southlake office serves clients across the greater DFW metroplex.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Trust administration law involves fact-specific analysis, and the outcome of any trust dispute depends on the terms of the trust, the conduct of the trustee, and applicable Texas law. Consult a licensed Texas attorney before taking legal action.