Before the appellate court’s decision in Barefoot v. Jennings (2018) 27 Cal. App. 5th 1, trust litigators assumed that former trust beneficiaries, i.e., beneficiaries disinherited by a subsequent trust amendment, had standing under Probate Code section 17200 to challenge the validity of that trust amendment in probate court. Barefoot upended this assumption, holding that section 17200 is only available to current trust beneficiaries and that former beneficiaries, like the petitioner in Barefoot, must initiate a separate civil action to seek relief.

Barefoot caused consternation among trust litigators because it, theoretically, shifted an entire category of cases from probate court to the civil department and created a strange anomaly in California’s trust law. Under Barefoot, a trust beneficiary left with one dollar can petition the probate court for relief using section 17200, but a beneficiary who is totally disinherited must file a separate civil action to obtain the same relief.

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