Can a temporary conservator of a person effectively sign paperwork that admits the conservatee to a California senior living facility subject to an arbitration agreement? Only if the temporary conservator has special authorization to do so.
Holley v. Silverado Senior Living Management, Inc. (2020) ___ Cal.App.5th ___, decided in August, is a cautionary tale
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 parent wanted them shared among a group of beneficiaries.
Provisions of the California Probate Code set ground rules for the treatment of joint accounts, but the statutory language is not crystal clear. In Placencia v. Strazicich (2019) 42 Cal.App.5th 730, the Court of Appeal clarified that the intent of the person who established the account is paramount such that the surviving account holder’s presumed right of survivorship can be overcome by just about any sort of admissible evidence, as long as it is clear and convincing. The survivor just may have to share the piggy bank.
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
What do you do if someone steals money or property from a trust or estate? California Probate Code section 850 allows you to ask the Superior Court to order the thief to give the money or property back. To discourage such theft, Probate Code section 859 provides that the wrongdoer “shall be liable for twice the value of the property recovered,” and may be liable for legal expenses incurred to recover the property, if you can prove the wrongdoer took the asset in bad faith, through undue influence, or through the commission of financial elder abuse.
Like many California statutes, the “twice the value” language of Probate Code section 859 is not crystal clear. Thankfully, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Conservatorship of Ribal (2019) 31 Cal.App.5th 519 recently provided guidance as to how to the calculation works.
A California trustee can be excused from liability for breaches of trust if a judge determines that it would be equitable to do so.
We see many situations where a family member trustee strays from the requirements of the trust instrument. Still, if the trustee does not favor himself or herself, and the beneficiary is not appreciably harmed, then the trustee may get a pass from the court under California Probate Code section 16440. That’s the lesson of Orange Catholic Foundation v. Arvizu (2018) 28 Cal.App.5th 283, published last month by the California Court of Appeal.
The attorney-client privilege in California belongs to the office of trustee, not to the incumbent in that office, thus generally allowing successor trustees to obtain confidential communications that their predecessors had with counsel. We blogged last year about an appellate opinion that reinforced this concept.
Last month, in Morgan v. Superior Court (2018) 23 Cal.App.5th 1026, the Court of Appeal found that a clause in a trust instrument expressly allowing a trustee to withhold attorney-client communications violates public policy and is unenforceable. California estate planning attorneys take note: there is no way to draft around the rule that the attorney-client privilege stays with the office of trustee.