A California inheritance dispute involving five siblings, decades of family loans and rental income, and several property transactions centred mainly on how much a trustee could deduct from a beneficiary’s share of an inheritance. In Sandford v. Sandford, decided on September 2, 2026, the California Court of Appeal ruled that a trust’s equalisation clause allowed deductions for unpaid loans and unequal gifts, but not for rental or property-sale proceeds. The decision reversed a substantial part of an Orange County trial court’s ruling, which had treated various financial benefits as early distributions and ordered them deducted from two brothers’ shares. The appellate court upheld the orders on unpaid loans and left other parts of the judgment intact.
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