Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Ohio

Re: Inheritance and Trust

You mention 4 other trustees. A trustee is a person designated to administer a trust for the benefit of the trust's beneficiaries. While it is possible for a trust to have 4 or 5 co-trustees, it is atypical. Typically you will see 1 or 2 trustees serving at any particular time. It is possible you meant that there are a total of 5 beneficiaries.

The root of the issue you raise is whether or not your trust interest has any limitation on its transfer, pledge, conveyance, sale, or alienability. Many trusts restrict the ability of a trust beneficiary to transfer or sell their interest directly or indirectly while it is still part of the trust corpus.

You also need to know whether or not the "inheritance" has been distributed out of the trust to the individual beneficiary. In this situation, the property would no longer be part of the trust corpus and the beneficiary would then be the new owner and would very likely be able to convey or sell their interest. In Ohio, this type of transfer from the trust to a beneficiary would appear on a document called a Fiduciary Deed.

Whenever real estate is at issue, it is also important to know the nature of the interest owned, such as a fee simple absolute (in layman's terms this would be complete and total ownership) or something less than fee simple absolute, such as a life estate, or an interest only in mineral rights like oil and gas.

If the trust was designed to keep title to the real estate without distributing it to a beneficiary, then you may have to revert to an adversarial lawsuit against the trust, or you might be able to negotiate a Private Settlement Agreement pursuant to the relatively new Ohio Trust Code.

Best of luck with your situation and, as always, I advise you to promptly consult with an experienced local attorney in order to evaluate the situation in detail.