Christopher J. Ryan Jr., David Horton, and Reid Kress Weisbord recently published Uncontested Trusts in Court, Indiana Legal Studies Research Paper No. 564, George Mason Law Review (forthcoming 2025). The authors examined 1,431 trust cases filed in San Francisco Superior Court between 2014 and 2020 and found that 971 (68%) involved no dispute.
These “uncontested” matters often reached the courts for reasons such as retitling property under California Probate Code § 850 (known as Heggstad petitions), appointing successor trustees, modifying or terminating irrevocable trusts, and interpreting ambiguous terms. The study concludes that, despite the conventional belief that trusts avoid court oversight, many routine administrative and corrective actions still require judicial approval.
Interesting paper, but context matters. Since the dataset comes from one of the wealthiest counties in the country, and because Heggstad petitions are a California specific petition not available in many other states (including North Carolina), their data may not be representative of the rest of the country.