Trust Accounting for California Trustees
What a California trust accounting contains and what the trust document can change. Prepared for trustees in Los Angeles and across California.
A trust accounting shows beneficiaries what came into the trust, what went out, what the trust holds at the end of the period, what the trustee was paid, and who the trustee hired. Streamline Bookkeeping prepares those accountings and keeps the records behind them.
What it contains
Receipts and disbursements, split between principal and income. Assets and liabilities at the end of the period. The trustee’s compensation. The agents the trustee hired and what they were paid.
The trust document controls the schedule, the recipients, and the format. The attorney on the matter reads it and sets those. Streamline builds the numbers.
Principal and income
This is what makes trust bookkeeping different.
An income beneficiary is entitled to what the assets produce. A remainder beneficiary is entitled to the assets. A rent check and the sale of the building that produced it go on opposite sides of that line, and the classification happens as each transaction is recorded.
The trust document sets the allocation rules. Where it is silent, California’s fiduciary income and principal rules fill in, and a trustee’s own decisions can shift the allocation as well. So the books follow the trust and the trustee, not a fixed formula.
A trust holding a rental property, a brokerage account, and a business interest generates hundreds of allocations a year. Each one affects what a beneficiary is owed.
When the accounting goes to court
When a trust accounting goes to court, it is rebuilt in the probate schedule format: summary of account, charges and credits, one schedule per category. The attorney files it. Streamline produces the schedules from the same records.
Services
- Annual trust accountings for beneficiaries
- Accountings on termination of a trust or a change of trustee
- Court-format accountings when a trust accounting goes to court
- Special needs trust accountings
- Principal and income classification maintained month to month
- Reconstruction of prior periods where no records were kept
- Books that support Form 1041 and the accounting from the same data
Who we work with
Professional trustees, family members serving as successor trustee, estate planning and trust attorneys, and CPAs preparing Form 1041 who need the accounting produced separately.
Streamline Bookkeeping works with families, estate planning attorneys, and professional trustees in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, across California, and nationwide. Reach out to discuss a matter.
*Bookkeeping services only. Not legal or tax advice. What a specific trust requires comes from the trust document and the attorney on the matter.*