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A grandmother in Woodland Hills sets up a trust that eventually splits among her three children, then their children after that, including grandchildren who aren’t born yet. Under the old rule, her trustee had to track down and individually notify every one of those future beneficiaries before making almost any change to the trust: naming an unborn great-grandchild’s guardian ad litem, mailing notice to a two-year-old through a court-appointed representative, chasing down a grandchild who moved and never updated her address. For a family trust with even a modest number of branches, that could mean months of delay and thousands of dollars in legal fees before anything got resolved.
As of January 1, 2026, that changed. AB 565, signed by Governor Newsom on July 14, 2025, rewrites Probate Code section 15804 to let California trustees use “virtual representation,” letting one person stand in for another’s interests, far more broadly than before.
The idea isn’t new to trust law nationally; California was simply behind most other states in adopting it. Under the revised section 15804, a person with a “substantially identical interest” to a beneficiary who can’t act for themselves, because that beneficiary is a minor, incapacitated, not yet born, or unknown and can’t reasonably be located, can now receive notice, give consent, and bind that beneficiary’s interest in most trust matters. Lawyers who track this bill refer to that group as MIUU beneficiaries: minor, incapacitated, unborn, or unknown.
In practice, that means a parent can often represent a minor child’s interest, an adult beneficiary can represent a sibling’s not-yet-born children, and a trustee doesn’t have to locate every single person down every branch of a family tree before moving a routine trust matter forward. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s own analysis of the bill frames this as bringing California in line with the Uniform Trust Code approach already used in most other states.
The provision that matters most for any family relying on this: virtual representation doesn’t apply when the representative and the person being represented have a conflict of interest on that specific matter. A parent can’t use the new rule to sign away a child’s interest in a dispute where the parent stands to gain and the child stands to lose. That carve-out is written into the statute itself, not left to a court’s discretion after the fact, which is exactly the safeguard that made this bill politically possible in the first place. Section 15804 spells out that limitation directly.
Before AB 565, resolving even a routine trust accounting or a proposed modification could require a court to appoint a guardian ad litem for every minor or unborn beneficiary in a large family trust, at the estate’s expense, adding weeks or months before anything moved forward. The bill was sponsored by the California Lawyers Association’s Trusts and Estates Section and co-sponsored by the California Bankers Association: not a partisan fight, but a genuine administrative bottleneck both sides wanted cleared. It passed with bipartisan support and was chaptered alongside a companion bill, AB 1521, which separately tightened up executors’ notice obligations to the state’s child support agency.
Yes. AB 565 amended Probate Code section 15804 itself, not just the rules for brand-new trusts, so it applies to trust matters handled on or after January 1, 2026 regardless of when the trust was originally created or signed. A trust drafted in 2005 that never anticipated virtual representation still gets the benefit of the current statute when its trustee is deciding how to handle notice today. That’s worth knowing if you assumed an older trust document was locked into whatever notice procedure it originally spelled out: the statutory default has moved, even if the trust’s own language hasn’t been touched.
Virtual representation doesn’t remove the trustee’s underlying duty to act in every beneficiary’s best interest, and it doesn’t apply automatically. Someone still has to identify who has a “substantially identical interest” correctly, and get that determination wrong and the whole action can be challenged later. It also doesn’t touch conflict situations at all; those still need the traditional route, which can still mean a guardian ad litem or direct notice. For a family with a straightforward trust and few beneficiaries, this law may never come up. For a multi-generational trust, or one with beneficiaries who are minors or not yet born, it can be the difference between resolving a routine matter in weeks instead of months.
If your family’s trust already has minor grandchildren, a beneficiary who’s hard to locate, or branches that haven’t been born yet, it’s worth having someone look at whether your trustee can now use virtual representation, or whether your trust’s own language needs a small update to work cleanly with the new rule. Schedule a consultation with the Law Offices of Alice A. Salvo or call 818-676-9572 to go through what this means for your specific trust.
If you’re currently administering a trust, or you’re a beneficiary waiting on a trustee to act, three questions are worth raising directly: Does anyone in this trust qualify as a MIUU beneficiary, meaning a minor, someone incapacitated, someone not yet born, or someone whose location is genuinely unknown? Is there anyone with a “substantially identical interest” who could stand in for them without a conflict? And has the trustee documented that conflict-of-interest check in writing, rather than just assuming it’s fine? That documentation is exactly what would matter if the decision were ever challenged later.
Trust administration in California just got measurably faster for the families this law was built for, but only if the people handling it actually know the rule exists. A trustee who’s still tracking down every unborn great-grandchild’s address by certified mail in 2026 is doing unnecessary work, at the estate’s expense. If you’re not sure whether your family’s trust qualifies, the Law Offices of Alice A. Salvo can walk through it with you. Call 818-676-9572 to set up a time.