Pennsylvania Trust and Estate Accounting Requirements
Current as of September 2026. General information, not legal or tax advice.
Pennsylvania prescribes the form of a fiduciary account more tightly than almost any other state, and it is the one jurisdiction that expressly ties its rule to the Uniform Fiduciary Accounting Principles. Pennsylvania adopted the Uniform Trust Code at 20 Pa.C.S. Chapter 77 in 2006; the sections are captioned against the uniform act, so section 7701 reads “Short title of chapter — UTC 101.”
Who must provide an accounting in Pennsylvania
Trust reporting is request-driven rather than automatic. 20 Pa.C.S. section 7780.3 sets the duty to inform and report: prompt response to reasonable requests for information, and thirty-day notices on the settlor’s incapacity or death. Subsection (i)(5) requires the notice to state each current beneficiary’s right to receive, at least annually upon request, periodic written financial reports. The duty is waivable under subsection (j). This is a meaningful departure from most Uniform Trust Code states, which impose an automatic annual report. For estates, 20 Pa.C.S. section 3501.1 makes filing permissive: a personal representative may file an account at any time after four months from the first complete advertisement of the grant of letters, may be cited to file after six months, and may be directed by the court to file at any time. There is no general mandatory accounting.
What a Pennsylvania account must contain
Pennsylvania Orphans’ Court Rule 2.1 governs, and it is prescriptive. Accounts must conform to the Model Accounts in the Appendix to the rules. Principal and income must be accounted for separately. Closing assets must be itemized. Every account must contain a cover page, a summary page with page references, separate schedules for receipts, gains and losses, disbursements, distributions, investments and changes in holdings, and verified signature pages. The personal representative’s verification must state that letters and the first complete advertisement occurred more than four months before filing. Rule 2.1© provides that the Uniform Fiduciary Accounting Principles serve as an elaboration of the rule, the clearest endorsement of those principles in any state’s rules. The current model accounts were amended through October 31, 2019, effective January 1, 2020.
Income and principal allocation in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s principal and income act is 20 Pa.C.S. Chapter 81, enacted in 2002. It is the 1997 version of the uniform act. Pennsylvania has not adopted the 2018 Uniform Fiduciary Income and Principal Act. Because Rule 2.1 requires principal and income to be accounted for separately, the allocation analysis is not an internal working step that gets summarized; it is visible on the face of the account, schedule by schedule.
Filing an accounting with the Pennsylvania Orphans’ Court
Accounts are filed in the Orphans’ Court division of the county Court of Common Pleas and must conform to the statewide Model Accounts. 20 Pa.C.S. section 3501.2 allows the account of a terminated trust, guardianship or agency to be annexed to the personal representative’s account, which is useful where a pour-over structure means two fiduciary roles are being wound up together. Note that the General Assembly’s website has migrated to palegis.us; older legis.state.pa.us links no longer resolve.
When a Pennsylvania accounting is contested
Because the model account format is prescribed, an objector has a concrete standard against which to measure the document, and a non-conforming account is straightforward to challenge on its face before anyone reaches the substance. An account prepared on a combined principal and income basis has to be rebuilt rather than reformatted, since the separate columns are structural rather than presentational.
How T.E.A. Fiduciary helps
We prepare Pennsylvania accounts in the statewide Model Account format, with the separate principal and income presentation the rule requires and the schedules in the order the court expects, as a licensed, insured CPA firm practicing fiduciary accounting exclusively. We do not prepare tax returns. We work alongside your attorney and your tax preparer so that the accounting and the Form 1041 agree.
This page provides general information about Pennsylvania fiduciary accounting requirements and is not legal or tax advice. Statutes and court rules change; confirm current requirements with counsel.
