Disinherited Alameda County estate & trust heirs and beneficiaries suffer most when the asset taken is the family home. Alameda County owner-occupied homes are valuable – now with a median price of over $875,000.00. They’re a natural target for estate & trust wrongdoers. And, there’s lots of them – over 325,000 owner-occupied houses in the county. So, when houses are taken from an elder by undue influence or fraud, the stakes are high. Questioned transfers are not limited to those made while the elder is alive. Finding evidence of the transfers may occur while the elder is still living. But more often than not, the illicit transfers are detected after the elder’s death. Such transfers might be revealed in a tit[...]

Language is powerful. It can ignite wars. It can heal wounds. It can hide harm. It can redeem wrongs. And, it can save lives. That’s what I want to talk about today. Women, 65 and older, outnumber men of the same age. Almost half of older women, age 75 and over, live alone. They are a target class for elder financial exploitation – for financial elder abuse. Lawmakers, law enforcement, news organizations and educational institutions are increasingly taking measures to inform us of the multiple ways that seniors are scammed. Family members, neighbors, adult protective services and other professionals can all assist in protecting older women, this targeted class. We all have a dog in this fight. I wrote The Wolf at the Door: U[...]

I’m not the story here. The story is about American families - and, their homes. Ben Harper wrote, “A house is a home even when we’ve up and gone even when you’re there alone a house is a home.” The feeling for home runs deep. Family home memories are passed on to us. I’m a custodian of memory for several of my family’s homes. I’ve visited my great grandmother’s Irish home – a home she departed when only 15 to sail for America. We had cake and an Irish whiskey at the nearby home where her mother, my great-great grandmother, died. My father took me to his boyhood Wyoming home. He pointed to the window where a lightning bolt once struck in a prairie thunderstorm. He showed me the room where his grandfather sl[...]

Peter Max is a countercultural icon, a painter whose art defined an era of rebellion, freedom, youth, and nonconformity. Because his psychedelic style was so recognizable, he became a wealthy celebrity artist in the 1980s who earned the right to be compared to other pop cultural artists of our time including Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst. His work appeared on cereal boxes, airplanes, postage stamps, and cruise ships. Even though Peter Max became an extremely successful and wealthy artist, in the late 1990’s he ran into financial troubles and pled guilty to tax evasion. Those troubles ultimately led Max to partner with a company called Park West Gallery which sells art at auctions held on cruise ships including Royal Caribbe[...]

While there are a variety of grounds and reasons for contesting a will in California probate courts, there is an important precondition to a court challenge: standing to sue. In essence, you must have a property right affected by the will – in the words of the law – you must be an “interested person.” California Probate Code Section 48 defines an “interested person” as an “heir, devisee, child, spouse, creditor, beneficiary, and any other person having a property right in or claim against a trust estate or the estate of a decedent which may be affected by the proceeding.” In the words of well-known trust and estate litigation Super Lawyer, Denise Chambliss, “it is black letter law that beneficiaries of an earlier will, [...]

Rick Black, Executive Director – CEAR, is one of America’s leading activists and commentators spotlighting the abusive practices in the conservatorship, guardianship and trust industries. Rick’s leadership at CEAR (Center for Estate Administration Reform) provides strong national advocacy for legal reformation of fiduciary abuse at the state and federal levels. Rick’s efforts include strong support for the legislative reform set out in the proposed Guardianship Accountability Act in bills pending in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Among the bills’ initiatives are a requirement that the federal Elder Justice Coordinating Council create a National Online Resource Center on Guardianship for the publication o[...]

Despite rumors and numerous alleged sightings, Elvis Presley, the King of Rock N Roll, died in 1977. At the time of his death, Elvis’ only daughter, Lisa Marie, was only 9 years old, but she became the heir to his estate, worth in 1977 a relatively modest $5 million. It would have been much more but for Elvis’ penchant for bad business deals and a life of excess. According to Elvis’ will, Lisa Marie’s inheritance was kept in a Trust, known as the Promenade Trust, which through his ex-wife Priscilla’s stewardship grew to an estimated $100+ million when Lisa Marie gained control. In the ensuing 12 years, the Promenade Trust owned Graceland as well as the royalty stream of Elvis Presley Enterprises. By then, Lisa Marie had been ma[...]

It’s not easy to be a trustee – for a lot of reasons. Some particularly challenging aspects of the job involve trust beneficiary distribution decisions – decisions inherent to trust administration. Trust settlors often express concern that their beneficiaries may request and/or spend inordinate amounts of money in ways that they, the settlor, if alive, might disapprove. Trustees are empowered to hold and distribute funds for the benefit of beneficiaries. This is a responsibility that can be challenging. Emotions may run high. Third-party trustees are often viewed as interlopers by family trust beneficiaries. It’s one thing to have a parent or grandparent as a trustee, and quite another to have an out of state or in state bank,[...]

Estate taxes can easily eat up large percentages of a person’s assets, which is why the strategy of creating an irrevocable trust to transfer wealth from one generation to another is often a good idea. Here at Hackard Law, we often recommend the establishment of irrevocable trusts when we think it will be to the long-term benefit of our clients. But like all such estate planning tools, there are pluses and minuses. Consider the case of Dr. Peter Bing, a doctor and philanthropist in Los Angeles who inherited a fortune from his father, Leo Bing, a hugely successful New York City real estate developer in the 1920s. By some accounts, Peter inherited a billion dollars from his father, and Peter’s son, Stephen, inherited $600 Million when [...]

Imagine you have an elderly loved one – maybe a parent or grandparent. How would you feel if someone took them from their home against their will, isolated them from you and looted their estate? What would you do? Believe it or not, this is big business – and the adult probate guardianship industry operates under color of law. Guardianship abuse poses a real threat to the well-being of seniors and their families. Lives are irreparably damaged and fortunes disappear, all because of the greed of skilled manipulators who use legal mechanisms to commit what amounts to elder financial abuse. The duty to protect is turned on its head when predators claim the right to plunder the innocent. There are ways to fight back, both through litig[...]