Professional fiduciaries.

Assembly Member Flora's legislation creates a new corporate structure for professional fiduciaries in California while expanding oversight requirements and appointment restrictions. The bill authorizes licensed fiduciaries to form professional corporations to provide fiduciary services, subject to registration with the Secretary of State and compliance with the Moscone-Knox Professional Corporation Act.

The measure establishes detailed requirements for these new corporate entities, including mandating that all officers, directors, shareholders and employees providing fiduciary services maintain active licenses. Professional fiduciary corporations must include the last name of at least one qualified person in their corporate name and designate a licensed fiduciary as the primary contact for regulatory purposes. The corporations are prohibited from billing clients for incorporation costs or corporate name changes.

Under the bill's provisions, professional fiduciary corporations must submit comprehensive reports to the Professional Fiduciaries Bureau detailing their licensed personnel, corporate registration status, and client information. While this data is treated as confidential investigatory material, certain information about disciplinary actions and aggregate managed assets must be made public. The legislation also expands annual reporting requirements for individual licensees to include information about corporate affiliations and implements new grounds for discipline, including failure to timely respond to Bureau inquiries.

The bill further modifies court appointment procedures, prohibiting superior courts from appointing either individual professional fiduciaries or professional fiduciary corporations as guardians, conservators, trustees or personal representatives unless they meet specific licensing requirements. Professional fiduciary corporations face additional restrictions and are barred entirely from serving as guardians or conservators of the person.