Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Illinois

It seems to me that you are confusing rents with income. Receipts, i.e., rent, is not income until the bills have been paid. If the bills don't get paid, you lose the house and with it any "income." The answer is Yes. The Trustee has a duty to preserve the Trust and that means using any "income" it produces to pay its bills so as to preserve the Principal.

In the vocabulary of accounting, rental payments are "gross receipts" or "gross revenue". It's after necessary expenses have been paid that "net income" results. There's always a cost of doing business, and usually any contractual obligation to distribute earnings is focused on the distribution of net income. The word "income" presupposes some netting of gross earnings against expenses.

Very likely, yes. I cannot imagine a situation where the Trustee would not be authorized to do so.