Marshall Spear is in a bind.

His South Florida litigation is a lesson for trustees to strictly follow clients' direction by confirming all work requests and keeping them informed about ongoing costs.

After the latest round, Spear will likely receive around $8,400 for trustee fees, rather than the $83,000 he had sought.

Spear served as a trustee for a trust that the beneficiary wanted terminated without a final accounting. But Spear performed three partial accountings and "refused to resign unless the beneficiary released him from all liability," according to a South Florida appellate panel, which declined to address many of his arguments.

Now, about a decade later, the appellate panel upheld the lower court's decision to award Spear only about one-tenth of what he'd sought for the litigation and for work he had done for the trust.

The ongoing dispute in this case is almost a decade old and involved four trips to the appellate court.

It stems from an inter vivos trust that grantor Irving Denmark created in 1988 for himself and his wife, providing for his brother and their spouses to inherit as beneficiaries after Denmark and his wife died.

But a subsequent beneficiary would later allege that Spear, as the trustee, performed work that was neither necessary nor authorized by the trust agreement.

Spear's attorney William Jay Palmer, a partner at Jonathan H. Green & Associates in Miami, did not respond to request for comment by press time.

Read the Third DCA opinion:

When Denmark created the trust, it required upon his and his wife's death to have the property of the trust bifurcated, thereby creating two separate trusts, according to the Third District Court of Appeal opinion. The previous trustee resigned in 2007, and Denmark's wife had Spear take over as trustee before she died. Her husband died two years later.

Between January and June 2010, the remaining beneficiaries sought the termination of the trust pursuant to its terms. They asked Spear to make a distribution, resign and forgo the full, final accounting because the beneficiaries wanted their counsel to review all the raw data.

Despite this, Spear made three partial accountings of the trust in January, March and June of 2010. The beneficiaries, represented by Douglas H. Stein of Douglas H. Stein P.A. in Coral Gables, refused to accept Spear's accountings and filed a lawsuit against Spear. After the third appeal that was filed in this case, Spear sought fees and costs for the three accountings, attorney fees for his counsel and fees for his expert witness who testified in an evidentiary hearing.

The Third DCA found that the Miami Dade Circuit Court did not abuse its discretion in accounting for the hours the expert worked. It stated the first two accountings were the "only compensable services" and authorized fees for only 10 of the 60 hours for which compensation was sought.

However, the Third DCA stated that Spear was correct about the hourly rate of his expert. Instead of $400, the appellate court approved an hourly rate of $450.

Despite the increased hourly fee award for his expert, Spear is stuck with the 90% decrease of the award she sought for her fees and costs as trustee. The Third DCA found that the trial judge had properly made his findings based on the amount of time spent and the value of the services that the trustee provided to the trust.