Who Can Sign for a Minor or Unborn Beneficiary? California's New Virtual Representation Law

A family wants to resolve a trust dispute. Everyone who matters is in agreement. Then counsel points out the problem: two of the beneficiaries are children, one branch of the family includes grandchildren who do not exist yet, and a cousin has not been heard from since 2011. Nobody in that group can consent to anything, so the family faces a guardian ad litem, court supervision, and months of expense to conclude a deal the adults already reached.

As of January 1, 2026, California has a better answer. Assembly Bill 565 amended Probate Code section 15804 to adopt broad virtual representation, joining most other states in allowing one person to receive notice for, represent, and bind another whose interests are substantially identical. It is a quiet, technical change that will meaningfully shorten a category of trust matters.

The problem virtual representation solves

Trust administration constantly requires consent. Approving an accounting, modifying administrative terms, settling a dispute, agreeing to a trustee's proposed action, releasing a trustee on distribution: all of it works smoothly when every affected beneficiary can competently sign.

It works badly when some cannot. Practitioners refer to those beneficiaries by the categories the law addresses: minors, the incapacitated, the unborn or later born, and beneficiaries who are unknown or whose whereabouts cannot be determined. Without a representation statute, protecting their interests meant appointing someone to speak for them, typically a guardian ad litem, with court involvement, fees, and delay attached, even where nothing was actually in dispute.

What AB 565 allows

The amended statute permits a person with a substantially identical interest in the trust to receive notice, represent, and bind a beneficiary who cannot represent themselves because of minority, incapacity, later birth, or being unknown or unlocatable.

The representation follows relationships that already exist in most family trusts. A beneficiary may represent another beneficiary whose interest aligns with theirs. A parent may represent a minor child, and children born later. A trustee may, in defined circumstances, represent beneficiaries. The unifying requirement is alignment: the representative's stake must run in the same direction as the represented person's stake.

The practical effect is that a family which is genuinely in agreement can document that agreement, bind everyone including the beneficiaries who cannot sign, and move on. What previously required a petition may now require careful drafting.

The guardrails, which matter as much as the grant

A statute that lets one person bind another invites exactly the abuse you would expect, and the Legislature addressed it directly.

The controlling limit is conflict of interest. Virtual representation is unavailable where the representative and the represented person have a conflict regarding the specific matter at issue. Alignment is measured matter by matter, not once and forever. A parent may share a child's interest in approving a routine accounting and be squarely adverse to that child on a proposed modification that shifts value between generations. The first is representable. The second is not.

Representation also reaches only those who cannot represent themselves. A competent adult beneficiary cannot be bound by someone else's signature because it would be convenient, and all representation remains subject to fiduciary duty.

Finally, the statute addresses the reliance problem for fiduciaries. A trustee who acts in reliance on representation faces liability only in the serious cases: intentional breach, gross negligence, bad faith, or reckless indifference. Without that protection, no trustee would rely on the mechanism and the reform would be dead on arrival.

Where the disputes will come from

Reforms that reduce court supervision tend to produce a predictable species of litigation, and this one will too. Expect challenges built on these arguments:

1. The interests were not actually identical. The most common attack. A representative signed for a minor or a later born beneficiary on a matter where their economic interests genuinely diverged. The analysis is specific to the transaction, and generational shifts in value are where divergence hides.
2. A conflict existed and was papered over. Where the representative personally benefited from what they consented to, expect the consent to be challenged as void rather than merely unwise.
3. The represented person could have represented themselves. A beneficiary treated as unlocatable who was findable with reasonable diligence, or treated as incapacitated without support, undermines the representation entirely.
4. The trustee leaned on representation to avoid scrutiny. Using virtual representation to obtain approval of an accounting that would not survive real examination invites a surcharge claim once someone examines it.

For beneficiaries who later discover they were bound by someone else's signature, these are the questions worth asking, and they are fact intensive. For trustees and their counsel, they are the questions to answer in the file before relying on representation, not after.

What to do with this

If you are administering a trust with minor, unborn, or missing beneficiaries, this statute is worth a conversation with counsel before your next consent or accounting cycle. Matters that were routed to court out of necessity may no longer need to be, and the savings in time and fees are real.

If you are drafting, the change rewards attention. Trust instruments can address representation, and thinking about who will be able to bind whom, years from now, is cheaper at drafting than in litigation.

And if you are a beneficiary who has received notice that someone else consented on your behalf, or on behalf of your children, read it carefully rather than filing it. The document binding you is only as good as the alignment it assumed. Whether that alignment truly existed is a question you are entitled to raise, and the deadline for raising it starts running when you receive the notice, not when you eventually read it. Our guide to the deadline to contest a trust in California explains how those clocks work.

Talk to a Los Angeles trust attorney

The Darvish Firm's Los Angeles trust litigation attorneys represent beneficiaries and trustees in accountings, modifications, consents, and disputes over trust administration across Southern California. If you are a trustee weighing whether representation applies to your matter, or a beneficiary who was bound by a consent you did not give, call (310) 677-3512 or request a consultation.

This article is general information about California law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case depends on its facts. Consult an attorney about your specific situation.