Appointment of a successor trustee; Petition to remove a successor trustee; Alleged violations related to fiduciary duties; MCL 700.7706(2)(c); Claim the probate court did not rule on appellant’s petition for declaratory judgment & motion for summary disposition; Motion for reconsideration; Sanctions; Whether the register of actions in the case was subject to tampering; Claims of judicial bias; Due process & equal protection; Whether appellant’s ex parte motion was treated differently from her brother’s ex parte motion

The court was not left with a definite and firm conviction that the probate court erred when it found that appellant-Mitchell did not establish a persistent failure of appellee-Ruiz to effectively administer the Trust. Thus, it affirmed the probate court’s order denying Mitchell’s petition to remove Ruiz as successor trustee. Mitchell was a beneficiary and former trustee of the Trust. She argued that the probate court erred by appointing Ruiz as successor trustee and by declining to remove him as trustee. She contended that the probate “court should not have appointed Ruiz successor trustee because doing so was inconsistent with the material purposes of the Trust. The probate court ruled that Mitchell had not established or even identified the Trust’s material purposes, much less show that appointing Ruiz as successor trustee had violated the purposes.” Mitchell failed to indicate what the purposes of the Trust “were or how Ruiz’s appointment violated them. Mitchell did not provide any evidence or arguments at the evidentiary hearing regarding the material purposes of the Trust.” Rather, her evidence and arguments at the hearing related only to Ruiz’s management of the Trust. The court held that the probate court did not err when it held that she did not establish the basis of her claims. Mitchell also contended that “the probate court should have removed Ruiz as trustee because he violated his fiduciary duties by failing to file taxes, failing to respond to Mitchell, and undertaking other actions contrary to his duties as trustee.” But these arguments lacked merit. “At the evidentiary hearing, Mitchell only proved that Ruiz had failed to file taxes for the Trust. Because the Trust’s accountant testified that the Trust likely did not owe taxes in light of its significant expenses, the probate court’s rulings that the tax-filing failure had not harmed the Trust and that Mitchell had not proven persistent failures were not clearly erroneous.”