How many times in life do we falter because we or someone helping us fails to ask the right questions? We’ve all heard, seen or experienced circumstances where friends or relatives suffered, maybe died, because someone responsible for their health failed to identify a safety or health problem. They failed to ask the right questions. I have my own experience with medical diagnosis and the right questions. Nearly 30 years ago I woke up at 3:00 in the morning with symptoms that mimicked a heart attack. My wife sprang into action, paramedics arrived, and I was soon on my way to an emergency room. Appropriate tests for heart disease and injury were accomplished. I came out well. Maybe it was stress. We took more vacations, watched my diet [...]

Trust instruments are like a set of instructions. They can be like a clear day or a murky pond. A good set of instructions should be simple, readable and avoid legal jargon. The settlor, the maker of the trust, should work to clearly identify the beneficiaries of his trust, their form of interest (income or principal) and the timing and plan of distribution. Our law firm often represents trust beneficiaries and disinherited heirs excluded by the action of a wrongdoer. I meet with disinherited heirs and often hear that “mom would have never done that” or “dad always told us that we would be treated equally. We heard that for 30 years.” Our job as trust litigation lawyers is to delve deeper – to look at the trust maker’s capacity[...]

Blundering trust and estate bandits are still bandits – outlaws secretly or openly defiant of laws and responsibilities that go with the legal obligations required of those who possess or are otherwise responsible for estate or trust assets. While the vast majority of trust and estate professionals take their fiduciary obligations seriously, unfortunately some outliers, some might say “bandits” - those who take “unfair advantage over others usually to procure inordinate payment or profit.” [1] Inordinate payment may range from outright theft to unconscionable overbilling that drain trusts and estate funds. Longtime Nevada estate attorney Robert Graham pled guilty last fall “to stealing more than $16 million from clients, many o[...]

Santa Clara County has become a major battleground for estate and trust litigation in California. When trust beneficiary rights are violated, it’s important to take quick action to safeguard assets and hold wrongdoers accountable. A trustee has fiduciary duties to the beneficiaries of the trust. This means that, among other things, the trustee should always act in the best interest of the beneficiaries, use reasonable care when managing trust assets, and not commingle personal and trust assets. In some cases, however, trustees breach these duties by engaging in self-interest or other improper behavior. There is a particular risk for this misconduct in cases in which a trustee is also a beneficiary of a trust. Common examples of behavio[...]

Petitions to suspend the powers of a California trustee are part and parcel of trust litigation. They’re often filed with the Probate Division of the Superior Court in which the trust is administered or the trustee resides. California Probate Code Section 15642 provides in part “If it appears to the court that trust property or the interests of a beneficiary may suffer loss or injury pending a decision on a petition for removal of a trustee. . . the court may, on its own motion or on petition of a cotrustee or beneficiary, compel the trustee whose removal is sought to surrender trust property to a cotrustee or to a receiver or temporary trustee. The court may also suspend the powers of the trustee to the extent the court deems necessar[...]

Under California law, Los Angeles beneficiaries have fundamental rights that are integral to a fair, timely and equitable distribution of trust assets. While the terms of a trust should be inviolable, there are still unfortunate cases when trustees abuse their authority and commit breach of fiduciary duty. This can result in serious damage to the trust and put a family’s economic future in jeopardy. When a bad trustee is in charge, all bets are off – they could delay or withhold trust distributions to beneficiaries, conceal or lie about the true state of trust assets, and even drain the trust of all its funds. In instances like these, it’s important for beneficiaries to move quickly to prevent further harm and protect their inheritan[...]

For many of us, our expectations of fairness arise from an early childhood experience that struck us as “unfair.” We may have seen an action affecting us or others that dashed our expectations – expectations often grounded in childhood innocence. These events may stay with us and influence our desire for fairness in our lives and in the lives of others. We often hear that “life is unfair.” Even Ecclesiastes notes that “the race is not always won by the swiftest, the battle is not always won by the strongest; prosperity does not always belong to those who are the wisest, wealth does not always belong to those who are the most discerning, nor does success always come to those with the most knowledge – for time and chance may ov[...]

Prospective clients often ask whether I’ve ever seen an estate or trust dispute like theirs. Case facts and wrongdoers’ actions seem so outrageous that aggrieved family members may think that their case is a “one in a million.” Of course, given the geographic and litigation scope of our practice, most cases don’t feel like “one in a million.” An estate and trust litigation practice at times feels like an emergency room. While non-emergency physicians have little opportunity to treat high-energy trauma cases endemic to car accident injuries, emergency room physician see such cases with regularity since nearly 10 percent of all injury-related visits to the emergency room are due to vehicle collisions. So when people come to s[...]

It’s 2017. Experts estimate that California’s population is approaching 40 million. Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Alameda, Contra Costa and Sacramento Counties are a very significant part of our state’s annual growth. These are also counties where Hackard Law regularly litigates disputed trust, estate and elder financial abuse cases. The breadth of our trust litigation practice in our nation’s most populous state provides a vista into what causes trust disputes to evolve into lawsuits. We receive dozens of calls from prospective clients every week. A significant number of these calls involve general trustee misconduct and more specifically trust and asset hiding. The failure and refusal of a truste[...]

Your parents owned a business and real estate. They successfully managed the business for decades and built up family assets. They put these assets into a trust where they remained as trustees during their lifetime. When they passed away, successor trustees took over. The successor trustees, through incompetence or even wrongdoing, are damaging your family’s economic heritage. They are failing to keep trust property separate and identified, they lack complete and accurate financial records, they are self-dealing, and they are failing to comply with California’s requirements for serving as trustees. Your parents intended for you to benefit from their lifetime of work and planning. You can see that their efforts – their legacy –[...]