What can a court do if an estate trustee simply refuses to provide any accounting at all?

A court has real teeth here. If an estate trustee simply won't provide any accounting, a beneficiary can apply to compel a formal passing of accounts, and the court can order the trustee to prepare and file one on a set timeline. Refusing outright isn't a viable long-term strategy — it's treated as a serious failure of the trustee's basic fiduciary obligations.

If the trustee still doesn't comply after being ordered, the consequences escalate. Courts can impose costs personally against the trustee rather than letting the estate absorb them, and in more serious or persistent cases of non-compliance, a court can consider removing the trustee altogether and appointing someone else to take over administration and produce the missing accounting. In extreme situations involving flagrant, ongoing defiance of a court order, contempt proceedings are also a possibility, though that's a significant step reserved for clear cases.

Beneficiaries facing this kind of stonewalling shouldn't wait too long before acting — documenting every request made and every non-response strengthens the eventual court application, and getting legal advice early helps identify whether the situation calls for a straightforward compel-accounting application or something more serious like removal.