Public trustee
The public trustee is an office established pursuant to national (and, if applicable, state or territory) statute, to act as a trustee, usually when a sum is required to be deposited as security by legislation, if courts remove another trustee, or for estates if either no executor is named by will or the testator elects to name the public trustee. == Commonwealth == === Origins === The first public trustee is that of New Zealand; it was proposed by Edward Cephas John Stevens in 1870 due to the difficulty of finding reliable private trustees in the colony and adopted by Prime Minister Julius Vogel who established the Public Trust and installed Jonas Woodward as the world's first public trustee on January 1, 1873.