The L. Frank Baum Family Trust is, as its title indicates, the trust established to manage the legal and commercial rights to the Oz works of L. Frank Baum for the benefit of his heirs. Baum's immediate heirs, his widow Maud Gage Baum and his four sons, received a share of the royalties from the series of Oz books that continued after Baum's death. They and subsequent family members acted to preserve and defend the legacy of Baum and Oz as they saw it, and set up the Trust to that end.
The Trust's control over the Oz legacy diminished radically, once Baum's books passed out of copyright and into the public domain in the later twentieth century. The Trust remains active, however. In celebration of the Oz centenary, the Trust has sponsored "authorized editions" of some of Baum's Oz books. It also sponsored the publication of Michael Patrick Hearn's edition of The Letters of L. Frank Baum: Including Contracts and Inscriptions (2002).
The Baum Family Trust also selected Sherwood Smith to be a new "Royal Historian" of Oz and to provide new additions to the Oz canon. These entries included 2005's The Emerald Wand of Oz, 2006's Trouble Under Oz, and 2014's Sky Pyrates over Oz.
The trust was managed by Baum's grandson Dr. Robert A. Baum (1915–1988) until his death.
See also: Mark E. Haas.