Thank you so much for answering my question. My deceased grandparents
owned a rock quarry in the state of Kentucky.  It is administered by a
trust officer in a bank. Basically, the operator of the quarry sends
the royalty check to the trust officer who then divides the money
equally and write checks to each child (shareholder/beneficiary) of my
grandparents. There are now 8 beneficiaries since one of the original
beneficiaries died and left no heirs, so his share was passed on to
the other family members per stirpes and divided equally among them.
Two of the original beneficiaries have named their own children as
beneficiaries (even though the original beneficiaries are still alive)
and their share of the money is divided equally among their children.
The first beneficary to do this has 5 children.  The second
beneficiary has one.  The other beneficiaries have children as well,
however, they depend on the royalty money for their retirements, so
the money will be passed on to their children only upon their deaths.
Here is the first part of my question: is there a difference in
"rights" or "voting power" of a beneficiary if they are receiving
money now, instead of when their parent dies?  The 2 original
beneficaries (who have passed on their royalty check to their
children) claim that their families have more voting power than the
other original beneficiaries because their children are "*named*
beneficaries".  Is this true even though the original will divided the
money equally (one share) among each child of my grandparents?
The second part of my question concerns the trust officer at the bank.
 Part of the family is suing him claiming "lack of fiduciary
responsibility" and want the trust moved to a different bank entirely.
 The other part of the family wants to retain this young man because
he has done nothing wrong and know that the family suing him is
looking for money and a convenient scapegoat.  It takes a vote of
3/4ths of the beneficiaries to move the trust and thus far, we have
been able to block the trust from being moved.  My question is this: 
is there a way for the family suing him to override the majority
feeling and have him removed?  The only correlation I can make is if
the trust was composed of 8 mentally incompetent people and 2 mentally
competent people.  How could the mentally competent people override
what the others wanted and "takeover" the trust?  On what grounds? 
The family suing the trust officer feels they have a way to do this
and I would like to know what it is before this completely innocent
man gets railroaded. Thank you so much for your information - google
has been just invaluable to me in the past and I appreciate your
consideration on this matter.

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Request for Question Clarification by richard-ga on 13 Aug 2003 15:00 PDT

It would be helpful if you would write out in full the provisions of
the trust that relate to these issues.  What does the trust say about
voting rights in the normal case-- where a child dies and his interest
then passes to his two children?

It's going to be hard to guess what strategy the other family has in
mind.  Is there anything in the trust language that makes you think an
imcompetent person loses his vote?  Normally I would expect that his
conservator or guardian ad litem would be able to case his vote.

Again, the more direct quotes from the trust that you give us, the
better job we can do.

Thanks
Richard-ga

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Clarification of Question by dailychaos-ga on 19 Aug 2003 11:27 PDT

Yea, Richard, I'm finally am able to log on!  Thanks for your
patience!  In the meantime, I'm hoping you won't mind if I change my
question a little.  Okay, Richard, not a little, A LOT...
During the blackout, I was able to get the answer to my original
question, so now I'm hoping you can help on a different aspect of the
original problem.  It concerns the quarry itself.  It is located in
Livingston County, Kentucky, and the question has to do with property
lines.
The operators of the quarry own the farm that is adjacent to our
quarry and would like to cross over our boundary line (blast
through)and begin to mine that area in addition to ours.  We would
like to keep the boundary perimeter intact as years from now, we may
need the boundary wall so the land can serve a different function.  Is
there a law or ruling that prevents a quarry operator from blasting
through a wall to mine a different location without the permission of
the landowner (or a ruling that, conversely, allows this) in the state
of Kentucky?  Someone mentioned "encroachment" and that there had to
be a boundary of at least 25 feet existing between the adjacent
properties, unless permission is otherwise obtained.  Thank you very
much for your consideration on this, Richard.  I hope it's okay to
"change oars" this one time only.  P.S. While trying to find the
"clarification" button, I came across some of the other questions you
have answered in the past.  I am changing your name to "Oracle"! 
Maaan, where did you go to school, Brainiac!!! :)  Thanks again,
Richard!

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Request for Question Clarification by richard-ga on 19 Aug 2003 15:34 PDT

Thanks for the kind words.

Your question is still titled "Legal Question - Trust Fund," and there
may be Researchers more knowledgeable than me in the area of Kentucky
real property development rights who will fail to notice the change.

It will cost you 50 cents to close this question and set up a new
question under a more suitable subject heading.  Money well spent!

Meanwhile I will be thinking about your question but please do not
limit the new question to me (that is, don't title it 'Question for
Richard' or the like).  If another Researcher can provide a
satisfactory answer you don't want to inhibit them.

Good luck!
-R