Breach of Fiduciary Duty

When someone accepts the role of executor or trustee, Texas law places them under what courts describe as the highest duty recognized by law. They are handling money and property that belongs to someone else, and the law responds by holding them to a standard far stricter than ordinary good behavior.

Most fiduciaries take that seriously. Some do not. When an executor stops returning calls, an accounting never arrives, or estate property quietly ends up in the fiduciary’s own name, beneficiaries have real remedies under the Texas Estates Code and the Texas Trust Code.

What Fiduciaries Actually Owe You

Texas breaks the fiduciary obligation into several distinct duties. A breach of any one of them can support a claim:

• Duty of care. Acting with the diligence and prudence a reasonable person would use managing their own affairs, including investigating options and consulting professionals when specialized knowledge is needed.
• Duty of loyalty. Putting beneficiaries first, without exception. This is the duty most often broken, and it is the source of the prohibition on self-dealing.
• Duty of good faith. Acting honestly, with genuine intent to fulfill the role rather than to extract value from it.
• Duty of prudence. Making defensible, well-investigated financial decisions with estate or trust assets.
• Duty of disclosure. Keeping beneficiaries reasonably informed of material facts, including what the estate holds and what has been done with it.

Warning Signs of a Breach

Certain patterns come up repeatedly in Harris County estate disputes:

• No accounting. More than 15 months have passed and the executor has produced nothing, or responds to written requests with silence.
• Assets used personally. Trust or estate funds paying the fiduciary’s personal expenses, travel, or business costs.
• Self-dealing sales. Estate real property sold to the fiduciary, their spouse, or their children, often at a price no arm’s-length buyer would have received.
• Unexplained delay. Distributions stall for months or years with no legal explanation, while the fiduciary continues to draw compensation.
• Commingling. Estate money deposited into a personal account, making it impossible to trace what belongs to whom.
• Selective treatment. One beneficiary receives distributions or information the others do not.

None of these alone proves a breach. Together, they are usually worth a serious look.

Remedies Available in Texas

Texas courts have broad authority to correct fiduciary misconduct, and the right remedy depends on whether the priority is stopping ongoing harm or recovering what was already lost.

Protective relief comes first when assets are at risk: removing the fiduciary, suspending their powers, freezing accounts, and compelling a full accounting. Where property has already been transferred improperly, a court can impose a constructive trust so the asset is held for the beneficiaries rather than the wrongdoer.

Recovery follows: damages for the loss caused by the breach, disgorgement of any profit the fiduciary earned from it, and forfeiture of the fees they claimed for the work. Forfeiture is a meaningful lever, because a fiduciary who breached their duty can lose compensation even for the parts of the job they performed adequately.

Deadlines

Breach of fiduciary duty claims in Texas generally must be brought within four years. Because this kind of misconduct is usually hidden, the discovery rule can postpone when the period begins, but building a case around that argument is far weaker than acting promptly.

The more urgent constraint is practical. Every month a fiduciary continues to spend or transfer assets, the pool available to recover shrinks, and the tracing work required to follow the money gets more expensive.

What a Claim Looks Like

These cases usually begin with a demand for an accounting rather than a lawsuit. A properly framed demand often produces records that either resolve the family’s concerns or make the breach obvious. If the fiduciary refuses, that refusal becomes part of the case.

From there the matter proceeds like other estate litigation in Harris County: pleadings filed in the probate court already handling the estate, discovery into the financial records, and mediation, where most of these disputes resolve.

Why Choose Kyle Robbins as Your Houston Breach of Fiduciary Duty Attorney

Fiduciary cases turn on financial records and on knowing which duty the conduct actually violated. They also frequently involve suing a family member, which requires judgment about when to press and when to settle.

Kyle Robbins has handled thousands of probate matters across Texas, including Harris County, and represents both beneficiaries pursuing claims and fiduciaries defending against them. If you are a trustee worried about your own exposure, see trust administration.

Request a free consultation to have a fiduciary’s conduct reviewed.