Estate Litigation · Trust Disputes

Trust Litigation Attorney Pittsburgh

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Stephen H. Lebovitz is a trust litigation attorney in Pittsburgh who represents beneficiaries, co-trustees, and successor trustees in Orphans’ Court proceedings throughout Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania.

What Trust Litigation Covers in Pennsylvania

Trust litigation is not a single claim. It is a category of Orphans’ Court proceedings that beneficiaries and co-trustees use when informal resolution has failed and a trustee’s conduct requires judicial intervention. The most common forms include breach of fiduciary duty claims, trustee removal proceedings, surcharge actions to recover misappropriated assets, compelled accountings, and disputes over trust interpretation or distribution.

Pennsylvania’s Uniform Trust Act, codified at 20 Pa.C.S. §§ 7701 et seq., establishes the legal framework governing trustee conduct. The standard is not whether the trustee intended harm. It is whether the trustee met the objective standard of care a prudent investor would apply to the same assets under the same circumstances.

When Trust Litigation Becomes Necessary

Most trust disputes do not begin as litigation. They begin as unanswered questions: about distributions that were delayed, assets that seem to have disappeared, transactions the trustee cannot explain, or accounting statements that do not add up. By the time a beneficiary recognizes that informal resolution has failed, the trustee may have had months or years to move assets, destroy records, or create paper trails that complicate recovery.

Litigation becomes necessary when the trustee refuses to account, when self-dealing transactions have already occurred, when trust assets have been depleted, or when the trustee’s personal interests conflict with the trust’s purposes. The Orphans’ Court has authority to act on all of these, but only when someone invokes that authority.

What Pennsylvania Courts Can Do

When a trustee violates fiduciary duties under Pennsylvania law, the Orphans’ Court has broad remedial authority. Courts can compel a formal accounting of all trust transactions, issue temporary restraining orders to freeze trust assets pending resolution, remove the trustee and appoint a successor, surcharge the trustee for losses caused by mismanagement or self-dealing, and void transactions where the trustee had a personal financial interest. These remedies are cumulative: a court can order multiple forms of relief in the same proceeding.

The surcharge remedy reaches the trustee’s personal assets, not just trust funds. A trustee who depleted the trust through mismanagement can be ordered to repay losses from their own pocket. That personal exposure is what makes trust litigation meaningful for beneficiaries who have already watched assets disappear.

Trust Litigation vs. Estate Litigation

Trust litigation and estate litigation overlap but are not the same. Estate litigation typically involves disputes over a will, executor misconduct, or probate administration. Trust litigation involves disputes over the administration of a trust, which may be operating during the grantor’s lifetime or after death. Both proceed in Pennsylvania’s Orphans’ Court, but the legal standards, the parties, and the remedies differ in important ways. For an overview of how Pennsylvania trusts are created and administered, see our page on trusts in Pennsylvania.

When a trust holds real estate, business interests, or investment accounts, trust litigation can involve asset valuation, forced sales, and title disputes that require coordination across multiple areas of law. For related disputes involving executor misconduct, see our page on estate litigation in Pennsylvania.

What Actually Goes Wrong With Pennsylvania Trustees

The most common trust litigation matters we handle involve trustees who have stopped communicating with beneficiaries, trustees who have made distributions to themselves or family members outside the trust’s terms, trustees who have invested trust assets imprudently or in self-interested transactions, trustees who refuse to distribute assets to beneficiaries after administration is complete, and disputes among co-trustees about how the trust should be administered.

Trustees who fail to invest prudently violate 20 Pa.C.S. § 7774, Pennsylvania’s prudent investor rule. A trustee must invest and manage trust assets as a prudent investor would, considering the purposes, terms, distribution requirements, and other circumstances of the trust. Concentrating assets in a single investment, failing to diversify when circumstances require it, or allowing assets to sit idle in low-yield accounts can all support breach claims when those failures cause measurable harm to the trust value.

Trustees who favor one beneficiary over another breach the duty of impartiality under 20 Pa.C.S. § 7773. A trustee must act impartially in investing and managing trust property, taking into account differing interests of current and remainder beneficiaries. A trustee who is also a beneficiary and who structures distributions or investments to favor their own interest over other beneficiaries creates immediate grounds for removal and surcharge. The impartiality duty extends to investment decisions, distribution timing, and any other trustee action that affects different classes of beneficiaries differently.

Each of these scenarios follows a recognizable pattern. The trustee has authority. The beneficiaries have rights. When the trustee uses authority to undermine beneficiary rights, the legal remedies exist, but they require someone to invoke them before the damage becomes irreversible.

Related Trust and Estate Disputes

Trust litigation often connects to adjacent proceedings. If a trustee has already been removed, a trustee removal petition may have preceded the surcharge action. If trust assets include real estate, a partition or sale dispute may run concurrently. If the trust was created as part of an estate plan, estate litigation may be necessary alongside the trust proceeding. Beneficiaries pursuing trust litigation should also understand their broader rights as trust beneficiaries under Pennsylvania law.

Not Every Slow Trustee Is a Dishonest One

Most beneficiaries who contact us about trustee misconduct are dealing with a trustee who is slow, uncommunicative, or disorganized, not one who is stealing. Pennsylvania trustees are not required to provide interim updates on demand, and estates and trusts that involve real estate, business interests, or tax matters can take longer than beneficiaries expect. A trustee who takes six months to complete administration is not necessarily breaching a duty.

The distinction matters because the remedies available depend on what actually happened. A petition to compel accounting is available when a trustee refuses to provide transparency. A surcharge action requires quantifiable loss caused by the trustee’s conduct. Removal requires demonstrated unfitness or breach. If your situation is a slow trustee who is ultimately doing the job, the court is unlikely to grant the relief you are hoping for, and the cost of finding that out in litigation is real.

What we can do in an initial consultation is help you understand which category your situation falls into. Most of the time, the answer is clear from the trust document, the trustee’s conduct, and the timeline. If the situation has crossed from delay into misconduct, the legal tools exist and they work. If it has not, you are better off knowing that before filing.

Frequently Asked Questions About Trust Litigation in Pennsylvania

Stephen H. Lebovitz is an estate and trust litigation attorney at Lebovitz & Lebovitz, P.A. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He represents beneficiaries, co-trustees, and successor trustees in Orphans’ Court trust litigation throughout Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania.