Intentional interference with expected inheritance (IIEI) was recognized as a legal claim in California about eight years ago in Beckwith v. Dahl (2012) 205 Cal.App.4th 1039. Last week, the Court of Appeal issued the first published opinion in California that affirms a judgment in favor of a plaintiff on an IIEI claim, thus providing guidance to trial judges and lawyers about what evidence is sufficient to sustain such claims.
In Gomez v. Smith (2020) ___ Cal.App.5th ___, the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento considered a ruling by a Shasta County Superior Court judge. The judge concluded that the plaintiff should receive the benefit of a trust instrument that her late husband wanted to execute because two of his children precluded him from meeting with his lawyer to sign it. We have written previously of conflicts between stepmothers and stepchildren – this is just such a tale with its own dramatic twists. Continue Reading
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.
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 include them? In the trust and estate world, these children are often referred to as “omitted heirs.”
For more than a decade, some of Britney Spears’s most devoted fans feared that she was locked up against her will under a court-ordered conservatorship, 
Last week the California Supreme Court used a conservatorship case to clarify how appellate courts should review the sufficiency of evidence when the trial court applied the clear and convincing evidence standard.
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 should they become vulnerable to undue influence. Among these safeguards are revocation procedures, which may require that a revocation document be signed by a particular person and/or delivered to the trustee.
Effective January, 1, 2020, the Legislature changed California conservatorship law with respect to the personal residences of conservatees. 
Most California trust and estate disputes involve adults who can make their own choices about what to seek and how hard to litigate, such as the common scenario of 
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 designate who should get their shares of the trust.