As trustee of my late father's estate, am I entitled to be paid for managing it, and who decides the amount if the trust document itself never mentions compensation?

Appraisal tied to the inventory

When an inventory is required to be returned by a trustee, the estate and effects belonging to the trust must be appraised, and the court may order one or more inheritance tax appraisers to assist in that appraisal. Using appraisers already familiar with valuing estates for tax purposes gives the court a ready, credible source of expertise rather than leaving the trustee to value the property on their own say-so. This appraisal step is not merely a formality; it establishes an objective record of the trust estate's actual worth at the relevant point in the proceeding, one the court and any interested party can later refer back to.

Compensation, and who sets it

The rule provides that the compensation of the trustee shall be fixed by the court, if it be not determined in the instrument creating the trust — the instrument governs first if it already addresses pay, and the court steps in only where it is silent. This ordering respects the settlor's own wishes where they were actually expressed, while still ensuring a trustee is not left completely uncompensated simply because the instrument happened to be silent on the point. A trustee cannot demand more than the instrument fixes simply by asking the court to override an existing, express compensation clause the settlor already wrote.

Why the appraisal matters for compensation

A reliable value for the trust estate is often part of what the court weighs in deciding what compensation is just, alongside the actual work involved in managing the trust. A larger, more complex trust estate generally justifies higher compensation than a small one, which is part of why the appraisal step and the compensation-fixing step naturally sit together in this same section. Without a dependable appraisal on record, the court would otherwise be fixing compensation against a trust estate of uncertain size, which risks either overpaying or underpaying the trustee for the actual work involved.

No fixed percentage rule here

Unlike the fifteen-percent cap set for non-parent guardians under Rule 96, this section does not fix any specific rate; the trustee's pay is left to the court's own assessment, or to whatever the instrument creating the trust already provides. This gives the court more room to tailor compensation to the actual demands of a given trust, rather than applying a single fixed formula across every trustee regardless of the work involved. The tradeoff is that a trustee has less certainty going in than a guardian bound by a fixed statutory ceiling, since the eventual figure depends on the court's own case-by-case assessment of the work actually performed.

Related provisions

• Rule 98, Section 7 — Appraisal; Compensation of trustee
• Rule 98, Section 6 — Conditions included in bond
• Rule 98, Section 8 — Removal or resignation of trustee