Florida Statute 736.0409
“Noncharitable trust without ascertainable beneficiary”
What it means
Some trusts serve a purpose rather than a person: maintaining a gravesite, keeping up a monument, caring for an object. There is no charity involved and no beneficiary who could ever sue to enforce it, so at common law such a trust failed.
§736.0409 rescues it. A trust may be created for a noncharitable purpose without a definite beneficiary, or one that lets the trustee select the purpose, for a term of up to 1,000 years. As with a pet trust, a human enforcer — named in the trust or appointed by the court — stands in for the missing beneficiary, and the property may be applied only to its intended use.
- Validates a trust for a noncharitable purpose with no definite beneficiary — the “honorary trust” that used to fail at common law for want of anyone to enforce it.
- Maximum duration 1,000 years.
- Enforced by a person named in the trust, or one the court appoints.
- Trust property may be applied only to its intended use; any excess returns to the settlor or the settlor's estate.
- One of the three exceptions to the definite-beneficiary rule (§736.0402), alongside charitable and animal trusts.
How it plays out
These come up for the unusual instruction — a family cemetery plot, a monument, a boat or an archive somebody wants kept up after they are gone. The mistake we see is people leaving the wish without leaving the money, so the person named to carry it out pays out of pocket or simply does not. §736.0409 lets you fund the purpose directly and name someone with standing to enforce it. We pair it with a gift-over that says where the money goes when the purpose ends, because a purpose trust with leftover funds and no plan invites a fight.
Where this shows up
Pages on this site where § 736.0409 does real work: