Certification of Trust Requirements in Maine

Short answer Maine lets a trustee furnish a person other than a beneficiary a certification containing some or all of eight listed information groups, so those familiar fields—including the trust's taxpayer identification number—are permitted rather than universally mandatory. The certification must state that no revocation, modification, or amendment makes its representations incorrect, and any trustee may sign or otherwise authenticate it. Dispositive terms may be omitted, focused trustee-and-power excerpts may be demanded, and the statute provides reliance, enforcement, and damages rules but no certification-specific recording effect.

State

Maine

Statute checked

July 31, 2026

Sources

1 statute

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At a glance

Governing law and availability	Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 18-B, § 1013; general certification of trust authorized
Permitted use and recipient	Trustee may furnish a person other than a beneficiary a certification instead of the trust instrument (§ 1013(1))
Trust identity and party contents	May state some or all: trust existence/date, settlor identity, and current trustee identity + address; these fields are optional (§ 1013(1)(A)-(C))
Authority, status, and title contents	May state powers, revocability/revoker, cotrustee authority, and title manner; must state no change makes actual representations incorrect (§ 1013(1)(D)-(F), (H), (3))
State-specific required contents	Trust TIN is a permitted, not mandatory, field; no universal situs, governing-law, successor, beneficiary, or property-description field (§ 1013(1)(G))
Signer, authentication, and acknowledgment	Any trustee may sign or otherwise authenticate; no certification-specific oath, acknowledgment, notary, witness, or all-trustee rule (§ 1013(2))
Dispositive terms and permitted excerpts	Dispositive terms need not be included; recipient may require excerpts designating trustee and conferring pending-transaction power (§ 1013(4)-(5))
Reliance, enforcement, and improper demands	No-knowledge reliance + fact assumption; good-faith transaction enforceable; bad-faith full-instrument demand yields damages; judicial access preserved (§ 1013(6)-(9))
Recording and real-property effect	No certification-specific recording permission, requirement, recorder, notice rule, or real-property effect in § 1013

Requirements one by one

Maine's eight-item content list is permissive

Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 18-B, § 1013(1) lets a trustee furnish a certification to a person other than a beneficiary instead of the trust instrument. Unlike the ordinary UTC phrasing used in many states, Maine says the certification may contain “some or all” of eight information groups.

Those groups are trust existence and execution date; settlor identity; current trustee identity and address; trustee powers; revocability and any revocation-power holder; cotrustee authority; the trust's taxpayer identification number; and the manner of taking title. None is made a universal field by subsection 1.

Section 1013(3) supplies the mandatory content: the certification must state that the trust has not been revoked, modified, or amended in a way that makes the representations it actually contains incorrect.

Any trustee may authenticate

Section 1013(2) permits any trustee to sign or otherwise authenticate the certification. It does not require every cotrustee to execute it.

That rule is separate from optional subsection 1(F), which permits the certification to explain whether all or fewer cotrustees must act to exercise trust powers. Section 1013 states no oath, acknowledgment, witness, or notarization requirement.

Dispositive terms may stay private

Under § 1013(4), the certification need not contain the trust's dispositive terms. Subsection 5 permits the recipient to require excerpts from the original instrument and later amendments that designate the trustee and confer power for the pending transaction.

The excerpt right is focused on trustee status and transaction authority; it is not a general right under this section to every trust provision.

Reliance and enforcement use different standards

Section 1013(6) protects a person who relies without knowledge that the certification is wrong and permits assumption of its facts without inquiry. Holding all or part of the trust instrument does not alone establish knowledge of its terms.

Subsection 7 separately lets a person who enters the transaction in good faith enforce it against trust property as though the certification's representations were correct. Under subsection 8, a court-determined bad-faith demand for the trust instrument in addition to the certification or excerpts creates liability for damages. Subsection 9 preserves access in a judicial proceeding concerning the trust.

The section states no recording effect

Section 1013 does not name a registry of deeds or other recorder for the certification and assigns it no notice, priority, public-record, conveyance, or other real-property effect. A deed or other transaction document may follow separate recording law, but that does not make recording the certification itself a condition under this section.

What trips people up

“Some or all” controls the eight-item list. Trust identity, settlor, trustee, powers, revocability, cotrustee authority, TIN, and title manner are permitted, not universally mandatory, fields.
The no-change statement is mandatory. Its scope tracks the representations the certification actually makes.
One trustee may authenticate even if all cotrustees must transact. Execution of the certification and exercise of trust powers are different questions.
The statute supplies no certification-specific recording effect. A county deed system does not by itself create one.

Common questions

May the certification omit the trust's taxpayer identification number?

Yes under § 1013(1). The TIN is one of the information groups the certification may contain; Maine does not make it universally mandatory in this section.

Must the certification state how title is taken?

Not in every case. Title manner is another permitted item in § 1013(1), subject to what a particular transaction or recipient may lawfully require outside this section.

Can the complete instrument be obtained in a trust lawsuit?

Section 1013(9) preserves the right to obtain a copy in a judicial proceeding concerning the trust.

Statutes and sources

Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 18-B, § 1013(1)-(9) — optional information list, mandatory no-change statement, any-trustee authentication, omitted dispositive terms, limited excerpts, reliance, enforcement, bad-faith-demand damages, and judicial access. Maine Legislature (accessed 2026-07-31).

Source links

Every statute quoted above, linked, with the date we checked it.

Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 18-B, § 1013(1)-(9) · accessed 2026-07-31

This page is general legal information about state-law certifications of trust, not legal advice about a particular trust, trustee, beneficiary, asset, account, deed, loan, sale, title issue, tax identifier, institution request, or transaction. A certification does not itself prove that a trust was validly created, settle a trustee-authority dispute, transfer property, or satisfy every lawful disclosure or underwriting request. Requirements and reliance protections depend on the current statute, document contents, signer authority, recipient knowledge, requested excerpts, and recording context. Verified against the cited official sources on the date shown; confirm current law and obtain licensed trust and property advice before signing, demanding, relying on, or recording a certification or related instrument.

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