No one likes to be treated unfairly. We all have our stories when we’ve suffered an injustice, from being kids in school to our adulthood. And it’s no different when you’re a trust beneficiary whose rights have been violated. Los Angeles estate and trust litigation is a challenging field where you’ll need an attorney with experience and the right skills to safeguard your interests. At Hackard Law, we represent LA-area clients who have been frozen out of their inheritance – maybe a bad trustee has overstepped their bounds, or a wrongdoer has committed elder financial abuse. It’s our job to prevent any further harm to our client and to right the wrong. When potential clients call to speak with me, they’ve already been through a[...]

No one likes to be treated unfairly. We all have our stories when we’ve suffered an injustice, from being kids in school to our adulthood. And it’s no different when you’re a trust beneficiary whose rights have been violated. Los Angeles estate and trust litigation is a challenging field where you’ll need an attorney with experience and the right skills to safeguard your interests. At Hackard Law, we represent LA-area clients who have been frozen out of their inheritance – maybe a bad trustee has overstepped their bounds, or a wrongdoer has committed elder financial abuse. It’s our job to prevent any further harm to our client and to right the wrong. When potential clients call to speak with me, they’ve already been through a[...]

In any family there should be love, compassion and loyalty. Yet in just about every family there can also be estate fights. The problem with long-hidden family conflicts is that when they surface, it often seems too late for reconciliation. Secrets and untold stories tend to come up on deathbeds and ride in on the aftershocks of loss. From false promises to theft, the real question is not "Can this happen to you?", but rather, "Can you trust those you grew up with?" We all want to, but with trust lawsuits sometimes we learn the hard way that life isn't that simple. Conflicts over trusts and estates can appear from nowhere; family members might never even realize they were deceived until everything they had expected as a lawful inheritanc[...]

Family members of elderly victims of undue influence - a phenomenon often connected with elder financial abuse - recoil in disbelief when learning of an elder's coerced gift or bequest property transfers. This disbelief gives way to hurt and outrage as the estate thief makes brazen, insincere and false claims to the estate. It’s our job as probate and trust litigation attorneys to systematically gather supporting evidence to overcome the actions of estate thieves. Developing these cases often depends on claims of undue influence. "Undue influence" in California means excessive persuasion that causes another person to act or refrain from acting by overcoming that person's free will and results in inequity. California law considers a num[...]

Dysfunctional families seem part and parcel of probate, estate, trust and elder financial abuse litigation. There’s no getting around it. Marks of such dysfunction include the assignment of blame, threats of exile or abandonment, dominant and subservient relationships, grudges, disloyalty, winner/loser approaches to conflict and fear of loss. Family members with active addictions - alcoholics and drug (legal or illegal) addicts are common participants in the drama endemic to estate and trust lawsuits. So what should you expect when a trustee, executor, heir, beneficiary or elder financial abuser has a destructive addiction? You can start by assuming that the addict is in denial over his or her addiction issues and wrongdoing stemming f[...]

Elder financial abuse is a serious crime that reverberates throughout our communities, and it's a growing problem across the state of California. When an elder's estate or trust is suddenly changed without explanation to produce an unjust outcome, an unscrupulous family member, caretaker, or other individual could be committing elder financial abuse, with the means of coercion known as undue influence. Elder financial abuse reveals itself through specific patterns and behaviors, and we can usually track a wrongdoer's steps toward gaining control of an estate. They'll employ all sorts of tricks and techniques to get their way: frequent visits, blandishments, and gifts (emotional manipulation) as well as isolation, outright intimidation, and [...]

Back in 1968, my college education began at Santa Clara University. Military service intervened, but since then I’ve regularly represented clients in Santa Clara County estate, probate, or trust lawsuits. When you’re facing an estate fight, you may find it necessary to hire a probate litigator for Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, or San Jose. Not just a California probate lawyer or estate attorney, but one who focuses on litigating trust disputes and elder financial abuse. That is, a trust litigation attorney who tries cases and goes to court for estate trials in the California Superior Court system. Lawyers and law firms engaged in Santa Clara trust litigation are familiar with evidence, the discovery of evidence, the introducti[...]

Los Angeles probate litigation is a tug of war between risk and reward. If you are facing an estate fight in the Los Angeles area, you hire an experienced lawyer to solve problems. You deserve to know what it might take to succeed. What are the risks? What are the rewards? Attorney's fees are part of the risks in reaching for the rewards. If you need to fight the unjust actions of an estate wrongdoer but don’t have the money to hire a qualified attorney, where do you turn? Beneficiaries in an LA trust dispute or will contest may already be frozen out from their rightful inheritance - this freeze-out includes barred access to the resources to assert their rights in court. Contingency fees allow wronged heirs and beneficiaries to gain a [...]

Probate, estate and trust litigation in Los Angeles is very time intensive.  You may have heard the old saying that all a lawyer has to sell is his time. So what do you do if you’re fighting for your beneficiary rights and you don’t have the money to hire an experienced, battle-proven attorney? That’s where contingency fee arrangements can make all the difference between remaining with nothing and recovering your rightful share of trust assets or estate property. Hackard Law represents LA-area heirs and beneficiaries who need a fighting chance to contest disinheritance or a proposed estate or trust distribution. I regularly meet with clients who want to hire our expertise but cannot afford to pay hourly fees. That’s why most of [...]

What do you do when you find out your elderly loved one was subject to exploitation that resulted in the wrongful taking of estate or trust assets? Under California law that’s called elder financial abuse, and you should act quickly to prevent the abuser from causing more harm. That’s why beneficiaries facing trust litigation turn to Hackard Law – we’re dedicated to stopping perpetrators of elder financial abuse and recovering what rightfully belongs to victims and their families. Over just the past few years, estate and trust lawsuits in our state have been transformed by a powerful game-changer: the Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act. This new law in the California Probate Code enables you to pursue a wrongdoe[...]