If the trustee in breach of trust conveys the trust property to a third party to the trust relationship, would the transferee be a necessary party to any action for breach of trust that the trust beneficiaries might bring? It depends. If the transferee had allegedly knowingly participated in the breach, the answer is an unequivocal yes. See generally §7.2.9 of Loring and Rounds: A Trustee’s Handbook (2024), which section is reproduced in the appendix below. In the absence of an allegation of knowing participation, the answer is yes and no. As to the breach-of-trust component of the litigation, the transferee is not “necessarily” a necessary party. See Matter of Fenenbock Trust, 2024 WL 2095989, ---S.W.3d ---(Tex. 2024). As to the equitable-relief component, the answer would be yes, provided there is an allegation that the transferee has been unjustly enriched by the transfer such that the procedural equitable remedy of the imposition of a constructive trust on the subject property would be warranted. Recall that the imposition of a constructive trust sets the stage for a substantive equitable order to make restitution, which in this case would take the form of an order directed at the transferee personally to convey the title back to the trustee, or to the trustee’s successor in office. In such a situation the third party is entitled to due notice and an opportunity to defend his status as a BFP, namely that he had purchased the property for its full value in good faith and thus the property is now his and his alone. Should the third party prevail, the beneficiary’s only recourse then would be to seek equitable damages from the trustee personally and/or from any equitable property rights that the trustee may have in the trust estate. The Texas Supreme Court in Fenenbock does an excellent job of sorting out all this critical trust-related equity doctrine in the context of a matter whose facts are quite similar to those of the hypothetical in this posting, doctrine that is extrinsic to and unfortunately being obscured by the Uniform Trust Code. Recall that the UTC is merely an aggregation of some tweaks to the vast body of equity jurisprudence that defines and governs the trust relationship in the first instance.