Fiduciary Accounting by State: The Uniform Framework
Current as of September 2026. General information, not legal or tax advice.
Fiduciary accounting is governed state by state. The uniform acts have narrowed the differences, but they have not erased them, and the places where states diverge are exactly the places where an accounting draws an objection. The pages below summarize what governs in the states where we do the most work. They are a starting point for planning an engagement, not a substitute for the statute or for advice from counsel.
The uniform framework
Three uniform acts do most of the work, and it helps to keep straight what each one does.
The principal and income act decides what is income and what is principal: how a receipt is allocated between the income beneficiary and the remainderman, and which expenses are charged against each. The Uniform Principal and Income Act was promulgated in 1931 and revised in 1962 and 1997, with later amendments. In 2018 the Uniform Law Commission finalized a substantially rewritten version, renamed the Uniform Fiduciary Income and Principal Act, or UFIPA, to avoid confusion with the Uniform Prudent Investor Act, which shares the UPIA acronym. UFIPA broadens the fiduciary’s power to adjust between income and principal, adds a full article on unitrust conversion, and reaches estates and life estates as well as trusts.
This is the most consequential difference between states at the moment, and adoption is partial and ongoing. Of the states covered here, California, Florida, Washington and Colorado are on UFIPA, while New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona and Nevada remain on the earlier act. Allocation work written for one is not transferable to the other.
The Uniform Trust Code sets the trustee’s duty to inform and report. Section 813 is the operative provision: the trustee must send, at least annually and on termination, a report of the trust property, liabilities, receipts and disbursements, including the source and amount of the trustee’s compensation, and a listing of trust assets with market values where feasible. The drafters chose the word report rather than account, and states have varied it. Some run the duty to qualified beneficiaries, others to current beneficiaries or to any beneficiary who asks.
The Uniform Probate Code governs estates, and its two closing routes matter most to an accountant. Under section 3-1003 a personal representative closes informally by sworn statement, certifying among other things that a full written account has been furnished to the affected distributees, an account that is never filed with the court. Under section 3-1001 any interested person can force the matter into a formal proceeding, where the court considers the final account and discharges the representative. Whether an engagement produces a document for a family or a document for a judge often turns on nothing more than which of those two paths the estate takes.
Where the real variation is
Four questions separate the states, and they are worth asking at the start of every engagement.
Is the duty automatic or on demand? California, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Washington and Florida impose a recurring duty to account or report. Texas and Nevada do not; there, the trustee accounts when a beneficiary demands it, subject to a statutory clock and a once-a-year floor. New York has no general periodic trustee accounting statute at all, so accounting is either compelled by petition or offered voluntarily for judicial settlement.
Does the account get filed? Colorado’s default is to deliver the inventory and accounting to interested persons and file nothing unless the estate closes formally. Nevada files the inventory with the clerk as a matter of course. Texas independent executors may file an affidavit in lieu of an inventory, so in many estates the inventory never becomes a public record.
Is the format prescribed? A few states say exactly what the document looks like. California Probate Code section 1061 sets out a summary of account with charges and credits that must balance. Pennsylvania’s Orphans’ Court Rule 2.1 requires conformity to model accounts. Florida Probate Rule 5.346 attaches a model format as an appendix. Nevada’s NRS 165.135 prescribes a charges and credits summary in substantially the form given. Arizona mandates specific forms in conservatorships. Most other states prescribe contents and leave presentation open.
Carry value or market value? Court-filed accounts generally report property on hand at carry value, with market value disclosed separately if at all. California requires both, in different schedules. Florida requires both in the same accounting. Confusing the two is the most common defect we see in accountings prepared by others.
A note on standards
There is no GAAP for fiduciary accounting. The closest thing to a national standard came out of the National Fiduciary Accounting Project, begun in 1972 under the National Center for State Courts with the American Bar Association and the American College of Probate Counsel, which produced a set of Uniform Fiduciary Accounting Principles and model account formats. They have no independent force of law, but they are influential: Pennsylvania’s Orphans’ Court Rule 2.1© expressly treats the Uniform Fiduciary Accounting Principles as an elaboration of the rule.
Fiduciary accounting is also not tax accounting. Fiduciary accounting income drives distributions and the income beneficiary’s entitlement; distributable net income drives the Form 1041. They are computed differently and they do not reconcile on their own. Preparing one well does not produce the other.
These summaries are general information about state law as of September 2026, not legal or tax advice. Statutes and court rules change, and court rules in particular can change administratively without legislation. Verify the current text before relying on any of it, and consult counsel on questions of legal interpretation.
