Michael Hackard on Cross-Examination, Elder Financial Abuse, and Fighting for Families

Why I Fight for Families

I am Michael Hackard, founder of Hackard Law, and over five decades of practice, I have stood with families who were robbed of inheritances, isolated from dying loved ones, and left with nothing after a predator moved in. I have published four books on inheritance protection  –  including The Wolf at the Door and Inheritance Heists  –  and our firm has produced more than 1,000 educational videos that have reached over seven million viewers. My practice takes cases across California, including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Sacramento.

Recently, I had the privilege of appearing on Cross Lab, a trial skills podcast hosted by trial consultants Steve Hoffman and Olivia Espinosa of Trial House Consulting. The show pairs lawyers from different practice areas to cross-examine a simulated witness, revealing insights that cut across specialties. My fellow guest was Federico Lathrop, a plaintiff’s personal injury and wildfire litigation attorney licensed in both Chile and California. What followed was one of the most candid conversations I have had about why lawyers do this work  –  and how we do it better.

Hackard Law handles estate, trust, and elder financial abuse cases on a contingency fee basis  –  no upfront costs for qualified cases. To find out whether your situation qualifies, call us at (916) 313-3030.

Quick Summary

This article examines what motivates ardent trial attorneys, how cross-examination strategy is applicable in all practice areas, and why elder financial abuse situations require the same methodical storytelling as any other high-stakes lawsuit by drawing on a live Cross Lab sparring session.

• The Cross Lab format pairs lawyers from different specialties to cross-examine a simulated witness and discover transferable skills.
• Michael Hackard’s commitment to fighting elder financial abuse traces directly to a personal family experience in 1989.
• Constructive cross-examination  –  sometimes called a “yes and” cross  –  uses the opposing witness to tell your client’s story.
• Looping, short questions, and precise word choice are the tools that make a narrative stick with a jury.
• For heirs, beneficiaries, and victims of elder abuse who cannot afford hourly rates, contingency fee representation levels the playing field.

The Story Behind the Commitment

I did not choose elder financial abuse litigation because it looked profitable. I chose it because I failed once, and I never wanted to fail again.

In 1989, my mother’s 92-year-old aunt, Veronica, was a widow living in San Francisco. Her only child had already died. A caregiver moved in and systematically cut off every family contact  –  phone calls blocked, the front door guarded, no visits allowed. We contacted law enforcement, including FBI connections and local police. Nothing happened. Then one Saturday morning my mother called to say Veronica had died.

We drove to San Francisco. The caregiver met us at the door and said the house was now hers. My mother  –  a fiery Irish woman  –  pushed through anyway. In the garage, every family heirloom, every photograph, every piece of clothing was already in garbage cans on the day Veronica died. The estate litigation that followed dragged on for years. By the time the court issued its final rulings, my mother received a check for about $5,000 roughly a week before she passed away. The caregiver kept the house.

That experience shaped everything. I told myself: someday I will know how to do this. California’s elder financial abuse laws have strengthened considerably over the last decade, and Hackard Law now fights these cases the right way  –  with the tools the law provides and the resolve that experience builds.

For families in Los Angeles dealing with similar situations, our LA estate litigation practice handles exactly these kinds of cases, as does our Glendale estate litigation team.

What the Cross Lab Session Revealed

The Cross Lab format is deceptively simple. Two lawyers get ten minutes each to cross-examine a simulated experienced attorney witness  –  in this case, a vocational consultant named James Tufte who had issued a report claiming an injured garbage collector could still work despite a two-level spinal fusion, a fractured ankle requiring multiple surgeries, a MRSA infection, and the need for a cane and leg brace.

Federico Lathrop went first. His approach was conversational and methodical. He established early that Tufte had testified in 118 cases, 95 percent of the time for the defense, and then walked Tufte through a trilogy of standards  –  objective, impartial, complete  –  before asking whether a paid experienced attorney who cherry-picks evidence violates all three. Tufte never said yes outright, but the narrative was already built for the jury.

I followed. My goal was simpler: show that Tufte’s report was built on paper, not on the person. I confirmed he was not certified in California, had never met Grayson, had never observed him working, and had relied primarily on a foot-and-ankle specialist’s records to evaluate a man with a two-level spinal fusion. Then I walked through what the spinal fusion actually does  –  limits sitting, bending, twisting  –  and noted that none of Tufte’s suggested jobs accommodated those realities. When Tufte said Grayson was “mobile in some fashion,” I looped that phrase back. The jury gets to decide what “some fashion” means for a father of three who used to earn $25 an hour with full benefits.

Case Pattern: Hired experienced attorney, Paper Review

For a client who has had an ankle surgery and spinal fusion, a defense vocational expert delivers a report suggesting inactive jobs. The study does not contain an in-person assessment; instead, it is based on data from a job market database and a foot specialist. The consultant admits he never assessed the client’s true ability when questioned about the discrepancy between the suggested jobs and the client’s recorded medical needs. The jury’s estimate of future lost wages changes significantly.

Looping, Trilogies, and the Power of Short Questions

Hackard Law litigates estate and trust cases, not personal injury cases. But the mechanics of constructive cross are the same whether the witness is a vocational consultant or a trustee defending a suspicious amendment to a family trust.

Looping means taking a word or phrase the witness used and feeding it back in the next question. When Tufte said his review was “thorough and accurate,” I used that phrase to introduce every gap in his methodology: thorough and accurate, yet no interview with California employers; thorough and accurate, yet no consultation with workforce agencies; thorough and accurate, yet a report that is now six months old with no updates. The witness cannot object to his own words.

Trilogies work because three items are the minimum for a pattern and the maximum for easy memory. Federico built objective, impartial, complete into the jury’s mind as the standard Tufte had to meet. By the end of the cross, those three words functioned as a checklist the jury could run against everything Tufte said.

Short questions do one thing at a time. A two-clause question gives the witness two escape routes. A five-word question  –  “And he needs a cane?”  –  has nowhere to hide.

These same tools apply when I cross a trustee who failed to provide accountings, or a caregiver who claims a dying elder freely signed over a home. The LA estate theft cases we handle in Southern California often turn on exactly this kind of disciplined, methodical exposure of what the witness did not do.

Case Pattern: Trustee Stonewalling

A successor trustee delays distributions for two years, provides no accounting, and claims the estate is still being administered. When cross-examined, the trustee cannot identify a single outstanding asset that requires resolution. Each admission  –  no accounting prepared, no timeline offered, no communication sent to beneficiaries  –  is confirmed in a single question. The pattern of delay becomes visible without argument.

Balancing Compassion and Candor with Clients

Both Federico and I talked on the show about how we handle clients who arrive already traumatized. In estate and elder abuse cases, the trauma is layered: grief over the person who died, betrayal by someone trusted, resentment at having to hire a lawyer at all, and sometimes a deep skepticism that anything can be fixed.

I tell clients early: we both started at zero. I am going to spend real time and real money building this case. My contingency fee reflects that investment. And when we sit down to discuss a settlement, I want them to remember that conversation  –  not because I am asking for gratitude, but because clarity about the relationship prevents the kind of misunderstanding that poisons the process. Honesty is not just an ethical obligation. It is a practical tool.

Federico made a point that resonates: setting expectations early protects the client as much as the attorney. You cannot promise a win. You can promise to fight. Those are different things, and conflating them is how trust breaks down.

For families navigating these dynamics in Southern California, the contingency fee options for LA trust litigation page on our site explains how the fee structure works in practice. And our broader contingency fee guide walks through what to expect at every stage.

Why Passion and Risk Tolerance Define This Work

Federico observed that every successful plaintiff’s attorney he has interviewed shares two traits: they dislike insurance companies and defense-side bullies, and they are comfortable with risk. I agree. Contingency practice means you may work on a case for two or three years and receive nothing if it does not resolve. That requires believing in what you are doing at a level that pure hourly work does not demand.

For decades, I have stood with families who had no other path to justice. Heirs, beneficiaries, and elder abuse victims rarely have the resources to fund years of trust litigation at hourly rates. Contingency representation is not just a business model  –  it is the mechanism that makes the fight possible at all. Discovery, forensic analysis, and the pursuit of justice are not just legal strategies; they are safeguards for families threatened by isolation, manipulation, and fraud.

The financial toll grows when cases drag on. The fracture between siblings or between a family and a predatory caregiver often runs too deep for any judgment to fully mend. But a steadfast commitment to truth restores what dishonesty tried to steal  –  and that is why the work matters.

Learn more about Michael Hackard’s background and approach or review the California inheritance theft guide if you are trying to understand whether your situation involves actionable wrongdoing.

Key Definitions

• Constructive cross-examination: A cross-examination strategy that uses the opposing witness’s own admissions to build the examining attorney’s narrative, rather than simply attacking credibility.
• Looping: A technique in which the examiner repeats a word or phrase the witness just used and incorporates it into the next question, holding the witness accountable to their own language.
• Trilogy: A set of three parallel facts or standards presented in sequence to create a memorable pattern for the jury  –  for example, objective, impartial, complete.
• Contingency fee: A fee arrangement in which the attorney is paid a percentage of the recovery only if the case resolves favorably, with no upfront cost to the client.
• Vocational consultant: An experienced attorney witness who evaluates a claimant’s employability and potential earning capacity, often retained by the defense in personal injury cases to minimize wage loss claims.
• Elder financial abuse: The wrongful taking, concealment, or appropriation of an elder’s assets through fraud, undue influence, isolation, or breach of a fiduciary duty.
• Undue influence: Excessive pressure applied to a vulnerable person  –  often an elder with cognitive decline  –  that overrides their free will and results in a change to estate documents or asset transfers.
• Paper review: An evaluation conducted solely on records without any in-person examination, observation, or interview of the subject  –  a limitation that cross-examination can expose.
• Spinal fusion: A surgical procedure that permanently joins two or more vertebrae, significantly limiting the patient’s ability to sit, bend, twist, or maintain sustained physical positions.
• Caregiver isolation: A pattern in elder financial abuse cases in which a caregiver systematically cuts off an elder’s contact with family and friends to gain control over the elder’s finances and estate.

What to Do Next

• If you believe a family member was isolated by a caregiver or new companion, look for sudden changes in estate documents, new account signatories, or unexplained asset transfers.
• Get copies of any trust amendments, will changes, or beneficiary designation changes made in the last few years of the elder’s life.
• Try to avoid confronting the suspected party directly before speaking with an attorney  –  early confrontation can cause assets to move or evidence to disappear.
• Look for patterns in the financial records: large cash withdrawals, wire transfers, real estate deeds, or changes to joint accounts.
• If you are a beneficiary who has received no accounting from a trustee, look at whether the trust document sets a deadline for distributions and accountings.
• Try to gather medical records that document cognitive decline or vulnerability during the period when estate changes were made.
• Look for any communications  –  texts, emails, letters  –  between the suspected party and the elder that show pressure, dependency, or isolation.
• Get a copy of any vocational or medical report being used against a family member in litigation so an independent evaluation can be compared against it.
• Call Hackard Law at (916) 313-3030 to discuss whether your situation qualifies for contingency fee representation.
• Visit our contact page to send us a message or request a consultation online.

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