No contest clauses generally are not enforceable against beneficiaries of California trusts when there is “probable cause” to challenge the trust instrument.
Yet the probable cause safe harbor may disappear if the contest is untimely. That’s the upshot of Meiri v. Shamtoubi (2022) 81 Cal.App.5th 606, a Court of Appeal opinion issued last week.
Trustee removal petitions, like Centennial Fountains, are one of the more common fireworks in California trust litigation. We’ve explored how such petitions are litigated in prior post and a podcast.
In Bruno v. Hopkins (2022) 79 Cal.App.5th 801, the California Court of Appeal broke new ground by finding that a beneficiary who
We often receive inquiries about whether we will represent parties in California trust and will contests on a contingency basis. In contingency representation, the lawyer does not collect a fee unless the client obtains a favorable settlement or court judgment. Contingency fees usually are structured on a percentage basis, with the lawyer receiving perhaps 25-40
Stepmothers are frequent characters in California trust and estate litigation, as they are in fairy tales and Disney movies. With about half of all marriages ending in divorce, there are many stepmother/stepchild relationships. Mostly they work out fine, but some go south.
After blogging on sibling conflicts as a driver of trust and estate disputes, I offer thoughts today about the litigation I see between stepmothers and stepchildren. In Family Feud parlance, my personal survey says that step-parent relationships are a close second to sibling relationships as the setting of trust and estate litigation. I’ll focus on stepmothers here, though of course stepfathers also often clash with their stepchildren.
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 the more common questions we receive from trustees and from beneficiaries.
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, stepmom and the kids do not play nicely.
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 may take several months to pay off debts, value the various assets, liquidate them, and then distribute the proceeds to the beneficiaries in proportional shares.
Many trust disputes start when the beneficiaries get frustrated with the apparent lack of action by the beneficiary who also serves as trustee. Brother trustee may decline to provide reports and documentation to the beneficiaries. It may appear that he wants to hold onto the assets to benefit himself in some way – for example, he may live in the comfortable house in Roseville that he holds in the trust without paying rent, or he may operate and draw a salary from the family business that is a trust asset.