Trust and estate litigators, and mediators, are buzzing over a recent decision from the California Court of Appeal that validates mandatory mediation of trust disputes. In Breslin v. Breslin (Case No. B301382, decided January 26, 2021), the appellate court held that a California probate judge may order the private mediation of trust disputes and then … Continue Reading
One of the first steps before filing a lawsuit is to decide which court has jurisdiction over it and where it is properly venued. It’s a significant choice – not only for strategic reasons, but also because a poor selection may prove fatal to the lawsuit. Such a hefty decision is not always an easy … Continue Reading
Providing for your children is one of the primary purposes of estate planning, but what happens to your carefully crafted trust if you had children you did not know about when you created the trust? Or, what if you have children after you create your trust but never get around to amending the trust to … Continue Reading
Creators of trusts (also known as settlors or trustors) usually think long and hard about how their property should pass when they die. It’s therefore common for trustors, or their lawyers, to incorporate protective safeguards into their trust instruments to shield trustors from their own whim and indecision, and ensure nobody trifles with their wishes … Continue Reading
In California, a trustor (person who creates a trust) can confer a “power of appointment” on trust beneficiaries, empowering them to designate to whom they want to give their shares of the trust. The trustor can require trust beneficiaries to specifically exercise and refer to the power of appointment in any will they create to … Continue Reading
It’s unremarkable that California courts require that notice be given to affected beneficiaries in trust and probate proceedings. After all, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that no person will be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. While contingent beneficiaries may not have received an inheritance yet, they may someday and so should know … Continue Reading
A primary purpose of estate planning is to determine what a child will inherit (if anything) upon a parent’s death. But what about a gift given during the parent’s life? Is it an advance on the child’s inheritance, like putting it on the child’s tab until the trust is cashed out? Or is the gift … Continue Reading
Often an aging parent will add an adult child to the parent’s account as a joint holder to assist with asset management or bill payment. However, this may lead to an unintended result in California when the parent dies. The child, as surviving account holder, may get all of the account proceeds even if the … Continue Reading
Probate Code section 859, our subject in a recent post, packs a punch in California trust litigation. It awards double damages against someone who in bad faith wrongfully takes property from an elder, in bad faith takes property through undue influence, or who takes property through the commission of financial elder abuse. While the first … Continue Reading
While institutional trustees may have once slept soundly considering themselves immune from class action lawsuits relating to the purchase or sale of securities on behalf of a trust, the Ninth Circuit’s recent ruling in Banks v. Northern Trust Corp. (9th Cir. 2019) 929 F.3d 1046, sounds a rousing wake up call for every trustee who … Continue Reading
When a man dies in California, who gets the proceeds of his life insurance policy? The answer seems obvious: the named beneficiaries in the paperwork received and accepted by the life insurance company. But what if the man gave the policy away during his lifetime? Can he cancel the gift and redirect the proceeds to … Continue Reading
American courts (including our California state courts), in contrast to courts in England, do not typically award attorneys’ fees to a lawsuit’s “victor.” There are, of course, exceptions to this so-called “American Rule.” Among them is the “common fund” exception, which provides that one who incurs fees winning a lawsuit that creates a fund for … Continue Reading
When attorneys advise errant trustees, how vulnerable are they to breach of trust claims by injured beneficiaries? A case published last week by the California Court of Appeal provides a defensive roadmap to attorneys who are sued for such claims, along with an occasion for golf metaphors. In Cortese v. Sherwood (2018) 26 Cal.App.5th 445, … Continue Reading
Your ex-spouse may take under your life insurance policy if you do not change your beneficiaries and there’s nothing a California probate court can do about it. So ruled the Court of Appeal last month in Estate of Post (2018) 24 Cal.App.5th 984.… Continue Reading
No contest clauses are an ever-evolving area of the probate law in California. The Court of Appeal further refined the rules governing no contest clauses in a decision issued last week, Aviles v. Swearingen (2017) 16 Cal.App.5th 485. In brief, in order for a no contest clause to apply to a trust amendment, the no … Continue Reading
One of the most dramatic areas of California trust and estate litigation is no contest clauses. No contest clauses bring a made-for-tv excitement to the practice of trust and estate law because of the risk of disinheritance. Yet such clauses are widely misunderstood, even among attorneys.… Continue Reading
In our Sacramento trust and estate litigation practice there are several questions that come up over and over again. In many instances, these questions are the building blocks of our practice that lead to more complicated questions that sometimes require the filing of a lawsuit to answer. As a starting place, below are some of … Continue Reading
Beneficiaries beware: don’t dive in to trust litigation too quickly. That lesson was learned the hard way, ironically, by a diving heiress in Williamson v. Brooks (2017) 7 Cal.App.5th 1294. The California Court of Appeal decision, which related to a trust created by the founder of Kirby Morgan Dive Systems, Inc., addresses the question of … Continue Reading
Acting as a trustee can be a thankless and time consuming job, especially when the reward at the end is nothing more than second-guessing from trust beneficiaries. In our Sacramento-based trust and estate practice, we represent trustees who have strained relationships with beneficiaries, whether their siblings, step-relatives, or otherwise. One useful tool to help trustees manage … Continue Reading
Sometimes stepmothers are just misunderstood. Babbitt v. Superior Court (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 1135, recently decided by the California Court of Appeal, involves one of the fact patterns that we often see in California trust litigation: children from a decedent’s prior marriage have conflict with their biological parent’s surviving spouse. In other words, after dad passes away, … Continue Reading
At the Sacramento Estate Planning Council’s 2016 Technical Forum on Tuesday an elderly gentleman sitting next to me said “old accountants never die, they just lose their balance” and “old attorneys just lose their appeal(s).” Sometimes both happen when an unbalanced accounting results in a lost appeal. The California Court of Appeal issued a rare … Continue Reading
Trustee fees are common flash points in the administration of family trusts. Trustees may put in hundreds of hours cleaning out and selling the family home, dealing with accountants, lawyers, and realtors, and otherwise working to distribute assets out to the beneficiaries. A diligent trustee provides a valuable service and should be compensated for his … Continue Reading
Most family trusts call for the outright distribution of assets to specific individuals (i.e., remainder beneficiaries) after the creators of the trust are gone. In the most common scenario, the assets get doled out to the adult kids after Mom and Dad pass. Even when a trustee is diligent and the situation is straightforward, it … Continue Reading
Inheritance fights are nothing new, nor is public fascination with them. Charles Dickens published Bleak House in 1853, satirizing the English legal system in the context of the fictional case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. More recently, John Grisham’s Sycamore Row, released in 2013, was at the top of the New York Times best seller list. … Continue Reading
Trustee fees are common flash points in the administration of family trusts. Trustees may put in hundreds of hours cleaning out and selling the family home, dealing with accountants, lawyers, and realtors, and otherwise working to distribute assets out to the beneficiaries. A diligent trustee provides a valuable service and should be compensated for his … Continue Reading
Most family trusts call for the outright distribution of assets to specific individuals (i.e., remainder beneficiaries) after the creators of the trust are gone. In the most common scenario, the assets get doled out to the adult kids after Mom and Dad pass. Even when a trustee is diligent and the situation is straightforward, it … Continue Reading
Inheritance fights are nothing new, nor is public fascination with them. Charles Dickens published Bleak House in 1853, satirizing the English legal system in the context of the fictional case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. More recently, John Grisham’s Sycamore Row, released in 2013, was at the top of the New York Times best seller list. … Continue Reading