The answer is maybe, but you’re going to face an uphill battle. Unfortunately, the law does not give you an automatic right to receive a parent’s assets. The step-parent problem may be one of the most difficult, and least understood, issues in Trust and Will law. And it can play out in many different ways […]
The short answer is no. If you are named as the only heir to your parent’s estate, then you win—and all the excluded children lose. You do not owe them anything. Or at least, that is how it should work…in theory. But many cases are not that easy because the excluded children often do not […]
When someone dies in California, who is responsible to pay the debts? The simple answer is the estate, but that’s not such a simple matter in most cases. The reason it is not so simple is because most people do not require a probate estate to be opened. If all of your assets pass through […]
So who is in charge of overseeing your Trustee if that person chooses to violate the law and breach his or her fiduciary duties? Surely there is some governmental agency that will step in and hold that bad Trustee accountable…isn’t there? The truth is that there is no governmental authority that oversees that acts of […]
Imagine you were going to be given a specific gift of a house. You liked the house, maybe you grew up there. You could use a place to live and you look forward to having a place of your own. But then the house is sold by your parent and turned into cash, where it […]
In the world of Trust and Wills, some gifts are better than others. I don’t mean monetarily (of course $1 million is better than $1 thousand), but I mean the type of gift being given. There is a hierarchy of gifts—a pecking order if you will. Specific gifts are at the top of the heap. […]
In our last post we discussed the newly created Transfer-On-Death Deeds (“TOD Deeds”); now time for a few problems. There are two main problems created by California’s new TOD Deed rules. First, someone wanting to legitimately use such a deed has to understand all the technical rules that must be followed, and then follow them. […]
California financial elder abuse is one of the fastest growing problems in our society. As the Baby Boomer generation ages, they become increasingly more susceptible to financial scams. But not all financial scams are done by strangers. All too often it is those closest to an elder who do the most damage. How do you […]
Sometimes a beneficiary has got to go. When a Trustee or a beneficiary refuses to vacate Trust property so it can be sold, then an eviction may be in order. But beware, evictions can be blocked when the right procedure is followed. In this video partner Keith Davidson discusses some points about eviction.
Proving a step parent unduly influenced your parent can be nearly impossible, until recently. Changes in California law may make this type of claim easier to bring. In this video, partner Stewart Albertson discusses the ways in which to bring an undue influence claim against step parents.
