Episode 14–Help! How Do I Get My Inheritance? Real Lawyers, Real Answers

Hello and welcome to another episode of the stand fight win livestream today we're talking about how do you get your inheritance people who are entitled to receive funds out of a trust or an estate and for some reason they just can't seem to get what they're entitled to they have a bad trustee bad executor things along those lines my name is Keith Davidson hi I'm Stuart Albertson and we are real lawyers with real answers and we're gonna actually answer a number of questions today from real people we get these questions all the time and we've gotten a lot of questions before today's broadcast and we'll be covering those along with any that happen to come in while we're doing our live stream so if you have any questions and you're on facebook or youtube feel free to post your questions and hopefully we can get to them we usually can and if we can't we always make a point of answering your questions after the broadcast is over if we don't have time to answer it during the broadcast so how you doing today Stuart I'm doing good how are you doing good I'm a little tired we went up to LA yesterday for a deposition and so it's nice to be back in the office today kind of be able to relax and recharge your batteries we'll go out to get another deposition tomorrow tomorrow but today we get to talk about one of my favorite cases leader versus kurta and I know you're gonna be talking about that so without further ado let's get into it so let's go to our first segment breaking news of course the irony is this this case today is not so breaking because it comes to us from 2010 but it's an important case and it is breaking news for anybody who hasn't been through this before and we are talking about leader versus chords and I'll give you this site it's 182 Cal app for 1588 so 182 Cal out fourth one 588 and this comes out of the fourth Appellate District and it was decided in March of 2010 so the whole issue and leader V chords came down to something that really is quite simple which is you have two beneficiaries who are entitled to money from a trust the trust is over the trust says you're supposed to have outright distributions it's a done deal but the trustee won't make a distribution because the he wants some jewelry that one of the beneficiaries took out of the estate out of the house whatever and how many cases do we have where it comes down to something like a piece of jewelry or a coin collection or stamp collection I mean it seems to be in almost every case it's almost every case and then the other thing I would just say is that trustees who are in control and are maybe a little bit control freaky it doesn't matter what it is it could be jewelry a car bad feelings don't like their siblings there's always something they're doing and they're saying I'm not gonna make a distribution for X how did you do this so you do this in this case it was jewelry yeah so it doesn't matter what it is but this this trustee is essentially holding the trust distribution ransom until they get what they want on the jewelry the interesting thing is that the jewelry was not part of the trust and so the jewelry actually came out of an estate it's not a trust asset but yet the trustee is is saying I'm not gonna make a distribution until you give me the jewelry and the beneficiaries went to court asked for an accounting which they received and the trustee says well I gave you an accounting I don't owe you anything else and the court says well no you do owe them something else which is a distribution because an accounting in and of itself isn't the point of a trust the point of a trust is to give the assets to the beneficiaries that's why it was set up in the first place so the trial court ruled that the trustee must make a distribution that he's not allowed to hold that distribution ransom pending this outcome on the jewelry and in particular the trial court said that the trustee was in violation of Probate Code section 1600 for sub C and I brought my trusty Probate Code section that I have on the corner of my desk at all times and 1600 for has to do with do you do avoid conflict of interest because the trustee and under sub C it's talks about a transaction between the trustee and a beneficiary which occurs during the trust administration where the trustee gains an advantage from the beneficiary I think it's Vantage's the word I was actually having in my mind and that is anytime a trustee is trying to take advantage or put themselves in an advantaged position over the beneficiaries that's a breach of the duty of conduct that that's the preach of a duty not to have a conflict of interest and so we see trustees doing this time and time again who are their trustees and also beneficiaries at the same time but in order to make their piece of the pie bigger they violate this duty time and time again and here our leader records you have a trustee that's saying I'm not gonna give you the jewelry on an unrelated trust matter until you agree with me on the trust matter that I'm gonna be advantaged and it's I mean yeah you can't like me saying give me your watch or else I'm not gonna give you the money that you're otherwise entitled to under the trust would you have a right to but I'm just gonna withhold it right it's because right the court also referenced proba Code section 1600 40.5 and this is where trustee is not allowed to ask for a release of liability in exchange for distribution right see that all the time yep a lot of times if you'll sign this I'll send you your distribution yeah relieve me from all legal liability and I'll give you your money no it doesn't it's not supposed to work that way so the appellate court affirmed and it says look the duty the appellate court made the point that the duty to account for the funds of the trust is an important duty but it's not it's not the end of the trustees duty once you account the trustee has a further duty and that is to deliver the property to the beneficiary now that seems to me and maybe it seems to people watching this to be obvious of course a trustee has to give property to a beneficiary that's what the Trust says why wouldn't they but this is a very kind of a seminal case in this area that we use a lot where we say it's not good enough that you accounted and it's not good enough that you gave us information it's not good enough that you're telling us that someday you plan to make a distribution you have to distribute so let me give let me give you a hypothetical based on what you just talked about and that is let's say that we have three beneficiaries and there's a three million dollar trust one of those beneficiaries is also the trustee so obviously to the beneficiaries are upset because there getting their assets and you have a trustee who who provides all the information you would ever want on the assets in the trust the liabilities of the trust but they say it's gonna be a year and a half or so to finish up the trust administration but we've got this three million dollars in cool hard cash sitting here in this bank account yeah and they're saying look I'm gonna give it to you 18 months from now all the taxes will have been paid all of the attorneys fees will have been paid all the trust administration fees will have been paid and once I know that's happening then I know it's safe for me as trustee to give you all your 1 million dollars a piece because we're all going to split this three ways so what do we use leader V cords for in that scenario in order to get a preliminary distribution and so I think a lot of trustees make the mistake if they're not professionals they haven't been doing this before they make the mistake of thinking it's all or nothing so you either have to give people all of their distribution or nothing and so they err on the side of nothing because it makes and giving nothing makes the trustee feel comfy cozy because they know they have plenty of money there and they don't have to worry about making any decisions today so they can wait 18 months or two years or three years but the problem is is that that's not what the law requires and so we use leader B cords to say you're allowed to keep a reasonable reserve you're not allowed to withhold three million dollars total from everybody for eighteen months that would be unreasonable so at this point in time if that trustee understood there was trust administration expenditures and there's no real litigation on the horizon if they were to say okay we're gonna keep $500,000 in a retention about account that's actually a quite high number but if they were to say we'll keep five hundred thousand we'll distribute the rest in equal shares you probably wouldn't get much objection from the beneficiaries no I think as a beneficiary you'd have to really you probably would go along with that but I mean five hundred thousand is a very big reserve even on a 3 million dollar estate but yeah at least it's not 3 million and so if I had a choice between tell you what I'll distribute everything but the five hundred thousand yes I'll take that most definitely because you might as well put it in your pocket right but the other 500 thousand let's talk about what would be more reasonable right yeah trustees do not have the right to just withhold it indefinitely they have to they have to get on with it right so that's where we used leader bee cords we'll bring a petition in probate court will demand a distribution and that's the other thing about demanding and distribution by the way so in your example or you're talking about all these things three million dollars don't want to distribute what about removing the trustee would you prefer to remove the trustee or would you prefer to get an order distributing assets well the practical answer to that is I want to get the assets as soon as possible remove it a trustee it's gonna take some time it's gonna take an evidentiary hearing we're going to finish up written discovery depositions whatever before the court is likely to make gonna make that call but we see courts routinely make calls especially on the three million dollar hypothetical hey if you're gonna reserve $500,000 and the other 2.5 it's got to be distributed out to these beneficiaries there's no reason why they have to wait for that yeah you can get a distribution without trial that's right yeah it's fantastic and so and plus at the end of the day it's better to get money into your hands and get it out of the trustees hands and then removal becomes less important because if the trustee is trustee of a trust that only has 50 grand in it whatever I mean you can pay attention to them and you know if they'd miss spend it you can certainly hold them liable but it's not as big of a deal as if they're holding three million in their miss spending it yeah one thing I think the two beneficiaries here want to be careful of let's say that the trustee here there's some facts that lead you to believe that maybe they took five hundred thousand or a million dollars before mom and dad passed away and they used those assets in an improper fashion you may want a larger retention amount just so that you can go after their assets especially their share of the assets you'll take it out of that retention account because once you distribute it out to them it's gonna be harder to get so there is a select group of cases where you might be the one telling the trustee hey why don't you retain a million and distribute two million and the trustees can say oh great that's a great idea because you know you need additional assets in that retention account to make up for the losses that the trustee caused yeah so just yeah that's right if there's also a beneficiary so it just depends on the circumstance right but but you're definitely entitled something out of the trust and you know the interesting thing about leader V cords too is that if you read the case there wasn't that much at issue is like seventy five thousand dollars and yet these people had to go to court they had to fight it out at the trial court then they got appealed they had to do an appeal and so they did us all a favor because now we have this great case leader view cards that we can use to our benefit but man it was a lot of work and probably a lot of money and expense for them to get their trust distribution and that's the other thing they have to understand about this is that when you have a trustee or refuses to make a distribution there's a lot you can do to fight against that but you do have to take the action and incur the expense to fight against that right it's not gonna solve itself so okay so that's our leader V chords while we go on to asked and answered and we'll see what kind of questions we have and we'll turn to the ever lovely paralegal Kayla Kayla so let's assume that because there's a couple of different facets to that question but let's say that nothing's really started yet you're you're named in a will and you're supposed to receive the inheritance and nobody's done anything yet so what's step one to try and get whatever it is you're supposed to get well well you'd follow petition for probate if you have a copy of the will you believe it's a genuine will you got to find out what where the original is you got to find out who has it and ask them why they haven't filed a petition for probate and if they refuse to do so then you can move forward yourself with a petition for probate and that's important so that means that if you're named in a will you have the right to file a petition for probate even if you're not the named executor you know anybody who's an interested party in this estate has the right to file and you can ask that the named executor be appointed or you can ask that some professional be appointed and leave it up to the named executor to come in and argue against that you can get the process started you have to understand that under a will you're only going to get your assets once the assets go through the court process that we call probate you're not going to be able to receive them outside of probate unless it's less than 150 thousand dollars I think it's the limit now or if it's owned in joint tenancy or something like that so you do have to do that now what about let's say that you are named in your father's will and you're supposed to receive an inheritance and there's a probate open and it's going along but it just seems like it's just stopped like they they did everything they were supposed to do and then they stopped working on it and it's been a year and nothing's happened on it how do you get your inheritance then well you could you can first of all contact the administrator the executor and find out what's going on at least you take a stab at that and have some type of written communication showing that you tried to work that out informally and then you're gonna go to the probate court and file petition for instructions or some other type of petition where you're asking the court to order that executor follow through with the probate process or if they won't in the alternative appoint another executor yeah because you need to get rid of that person if they're not going to do the job because you do have to have a petition to close the estate and that's when you get to distribution the executor is not allowed to make distributions without a court order but you can go in and ask for a preliminary distribution so you can go on in a petition and anybody can any of the beneficiaries of the estate can go in and ask the court to make at least order a preliminary distribution so if you go back to your example of three million in the estate and you want to get at least half of it out you can ask the court to order a distribution of half of it and the court can do that if it decides to do that one thing to keep in mind here the question was specifically asking about a will and so there's essentially there are several vehicles that we have that trans transfer properties at the time of death we call them two categories of died of transfers one is a probate transfer and there are non probate transfers can you walk us through the distinctions there and what vehicles are we mostly really running into with the non probate transfers and what vehicle do we run into all the time with the probate transfers so on the the only thing that really goes through probate is anything that passes under a will or passes and the intestate statutes and that is assets that are owned in a decedent's individual name so if I have something in my name you know bank account and I pass away and it's just in my name then it's gonna go to my estate and if I have a will go under the will and if I don't have a will it'll go intestate if I have any other system of doing these things then that's gonna change and that's called a non probate transfer right so just just so I'm clear then the probate transfer you're gonna go to the probate court and there's gonna be an administration that's gonna be overseen and supervised by the court with lawyers present right and in that probate what we're really talking about it's either somebody that had a will this isn't significant it's a will it's not a cross that's a will or somebody that died without a will and they don't have any other non probate transfers that's right and then everything else is probably a non probate transfer which means joint tenancy so if you own an account under joint tenancy beneficiary designations like a life insurance or a 401k or an IRA or bank account or a bank account that has a beneficiary designation and of course the biggest of them all the trust so if you have a trust that's a non probate way of transferring out and when you talk about a trust are you talking about living trusts yeah revocable living trusts although you can create your revocable trust during lifetime - but what everybody always hears about is I need a revocable trust or I need a living trust all the same thing all the same things so what that does is it allows you to transfer assets into this entity of a trust while you're alive and then upon your death it passes to your beneficiaries without in theory having to go to court unless of course there's a problem and then you're gonna file in court and when you file in court you file in the probate court which it's not a probate per se but that's just where you file your trust matter if there's a problem with your trust okay one last thing to tie this all together then Keith and that is the question in this case was there's a will and I can't get my inheritance and so the result was either find out who is the proposed exact or the named executor and tell them hey you need to file a petition for probate and if you don't alt I'll file a petition for probate that's what we would do with the will yeah what if the same question but it's a trust what do we do then well and that that brings us to our second question so Caleb maybe you can you and asked us our second question and we'll see how that works well I got Kayla's weight on that one sorry Kayla how do I get my inheritance so I think how is it normally supposed to work with a trust so you you just posed a question as well which tees off nicely with this one which is okay it's not a will to trust how am I going to get it and the problem with the trust is it happens outside of court so there's nothing within the court process in theory that needs to happen for you to transfer assets under a trust in other words unless there's a problem so under a trust it's not court supervised right under a probate of a will that is court supervised that's right or if I don't have a will and I don't have any trust or any other type of non probate transfer that's also gonna be court supervised yes but if we're talking specifically about a trust and there's assets subject to that trust no court supervision and at least not all not initially if there's no litigation involved that's right and in California anything that goes under probate under a will or intestate that's always court supervised we don't have any out-of-court probates like other states have our our system is very antiquated in that sense but when it comes to a trust if you know that your names is a beneficiary and a trust and you don't know how to get to your inheritance because you haven't been contacted by anybody I think I would do this the same thing that Stuart suggested that you suggest on the will which is contact the trustee see if there's a trust attorney and find out what's going on are you are you acting as trustee are you gathering together the assets what is your plan for distribution all that sort of thing and you should follow that up and writing so send a letter an email carrier Pidgeon something to request that information and then if that doesn't work then the next step would be having to go to court and get a petition for instructions asking that a proper trustee be appointed maybe a professional who can take the proper actions I would think right so but a lot of times people have a problem even finding the trust document we've talked about that last week that it can be real tricky finding the trust dr. shirlee but once you have it then you can enforce it so either the trustee who's named in there is going to act or go find a new trustee right what's the next question killer we closed out a trust and paid everyone you then found out the house how the lien of $100,000 the lien is by a private party who hasn't requested a payment in 20 years how do we find out if the lien is legitimate and how can we pay it boy that's a that's an interesting issue especially if the house was distributed so if the house wasn't sold it was just distributed out to the beneficiaries the lien is still gonna be there if it was sold then you would think the lien would have been taken care of as part of the process yeah so I guess my first question would be well what's the lien based on is it based on something that's still enforceable or not because one of the things that people don't understand is that if you have a debt against the decedent you have to file a claim for that debt within one year the date of death or it's not enforceable but that doesn't apply to things like mortgages that are secured by a deed of trust and it may not apply to a lien depending on what the underlying lien is securing so if it's like a deed of trust those could still be subject to foreclosure and the property could still be subject to foreclosure if it's based on some contract that's no longer enforceable then you could actually just go to court you can either ask the person that removed the lien or you can file a motion and ask the court to order that the lien be removed and the court will order that if there's not a good basis to keep it in terms of paying it what do you think well I think we need know more information so what I would my answer that question would be number one find out the basis of the lien yeah find out what are your arguments against paying it yeah what are the arguments that the other side's gonna argue for paying it especially if it's a contract or something there's a good chance that you know how to pay it yeah you may not have to pay it and so that you've got to determine first of all whether it's pale bur not and even if it is payable the question is this can this be resolved for something less than the value of what they're asking for and was there an interest component that's running here probably not but you need to find out the value find out who it's owed to if they're even and if they're not you may be able like you said to go in and get a court to simply dismiss the lien yeah and those those those debts of a decedent often can be negotiated down that's pretty common because for somebody to actually enforce a debt against the decedent like I said you had to file a claim and probate so if it's not enforceable you just don't pay it if it is enforceable then you definitely could potentially negotiate it down and you should try to do that and then if you do have to pay it then I'd say whoever received that asset whether it's one person or multiple people they would all have to chip in and to pay that well and and this is where I wanted to add on this and that is it depends on who is who is this person who's this question coming from is it coming from a beneficiary where's it coming from the trustee and the problem if it's coming from the trustee there's one person that's responsible for paying this and handling this and that's the trustee what we found is once the trustee makes distributions out to a beneficiary beneficiaries are very likely not to send money back in and so this is one of those things where and it's unfortunate that this was found after the fact it still can probably be remedied but if you're a trustee and you're watching this and you haven't made a distribution yet you do want to make sure that everything is taken care of before you make that distribution because ultimately you're gonna be held accountable for that potentially yeah so the trustee should have figured this out for the main distribution number one if they didn't then the question is are they liable for something which they may or may not be it depends on the circumstances but I still think at the end of the day the beneficiaries since they're the ones holding this real property they're gonna be the ones who ultimately are gonna have to pay off this lien if it's enforceable right because they're the ones who have the property and who else is nobody else gonna care right you know so if you want to keep the property or if you want to sell the property something's gonna have to happen what's up next Calif the next question is how long will it take to get my inheritance well we get this question a lot and let's just use it an example of a will and a trust since we've kind of gone down both of those roads today so if we're talking about a will Keith somebody just died let's say that it's been a month since they passed away we have a will a petition for probate has just been filed how long are we looking at before a distribution is gonna be made to the will beneficiaries back when we used to do probates I used to always tell people that if it's a very simple probate and nobody's gonna object to anything the best-case scenario is twelve months twelve to eighteen months that's the that's like twelve months is lightning speed for probate I've actually closed one and maybe nine months and that was lightning fast for probate if there's gonna be any issues you have to sell assets there's tax issues there's a fight over something you're gonna be 18 to 24 months easy and maybe longer so the probate process does make things longer because you have to wait for court hearings and that slows things down but the parties also can slow things down so it's gonna be it's gonna take some time right and then if we're talking about a trust administration under the same set of facts somebody has passed away a month ago the trustee has now gotten their feet under them they've seen a copy of the trust they know what the assets roughly are they roughly know what the liabilities are and so forth how long are we looking at for beneficiaries before they're gonna get a trust distribution well that can vary based on the same issues but if it's straightforward there's like let's say you have an estate that's just pretty much cash no real property has to be sold there's not a whole lot of creditors there's not infighting with the beneficiaries you should be able to distribute that trust within probably three to four months you have a 120 day period you have to wait for the no-contest provision are for the time period to contest the trust which you want to be careful of even if you don't think there's going to be a contest so you're gonna want to wait at least that period of time but let's say six months should should close the trust if there's no problems and no sale of real property the only thing I would caution on that and I agree with you it can be it can be done that only isn't there is a one-year statute against a decedent a deceives estate and the decedent's estate if it's if it's insolvent it doesn't have any assets to pay any creditors then they under the probate code can seek assets in the living trust now that takes some hoops to jump through to do that correctly yeah but I think that's something that I think you're right theoretically trust administration should be quicker by the fact that they're not court supervised and you don't have a probate attorney asking well what does this mean what does that mean and continuing hearings and so forth but with the trust though the trustee has to realize there is some liability and that's where we talked about earlier about preliminary distributions right those come in and so nicely because if you want to wait that year out before you distribute all the assets out just in case there is an unknown creditor floating around out there you can make a preliminary distribution make the beneficiaries happy retain a certain amount in the trust account and then you're gonna be in a good position yeah absolutely I'm preliminary distributions work great because it lets you get things started I mean I'd say on average the trust should be distributed probably anywhere between 10 to 18 months unless there's litigation or unless there's an estate tax return or something like that but I don't think it'd be out out of out of the ordinary to have about 10 to 18 months on on trust administration that's right and if there is it an estate tax return that needs to be done those are very unusual now because it has to be a very large estate which there's a few of those floating around out there it can be 18 months or more just because you're waiting for the IRS to give you a closing letter and so right before you make that distribution but still there could be some preliminary distributions yes I think if I were a trustee or if I was advising trustee since we attacked them quite often I would say look trying to figure out how to make the beneficiaries happy if you can and that means making pull them together at the table give them a voice let them know hey guys here's what I'm facing as a trustee there may be unknown creditors out there there's tax returns there's a 706 estate tax return that needs to be done there's expenses that may be paid mortgages there's some debts some credit cards all these things need to be paid off and I feel stressed out about that so if I can give you guys say forty percent of the trust a state in the mean time so that let me finish up the trust administration for eighteen months and then I'll give you the rest well I think it's a great idea because not only that but once you give money to the beneficiaries the trustee no longer has to manage it you don't have to invest it you don't have to account for it you look completely reasonable right if in the future you ask for a release of liability you camp nobody can say that you condition that release of liability on making a distribution because you already made a distribution right that was one of the things I always did when we represented trustees is let's get a preliminary distribution out before we even ask for a release of liability so we're not triggering this probate code that says you can't do that right now I've given the beneficiaries money and there's a smaller amount left and reserve now we say hey would you like to sign this release of liability or do you want us to do a court accounting which is expensive then the beneficiaries can make a decision and we don't look like we're running afoul of the probate code that's right that's fantastic so all right the second part is the original branders incapacitated with Alzheimer's I mean what's what's he really well it sounds like there may be an issue of conservatorship that may be out with open there if the set lor still living yeah and has dementia then the question is is that it's a conservatorship finally needed and that's problematic in incident it has its own issues that run with that but let's talk about do I need a lawyer to prove up fraud first of all I understand that lawyers don't have the best reputations and probably deservedly so but lawyers are needed and particularly in these kind of cases I mean think about what we just talked about today we talked about a different procedure for wills a different procedures for test date versus intestate a different procedure for living trusts versus other non probate transfers this is a very complex area and now on top of that you're gonna throw fraud in well what are some of the things we run into as lawyers and give us a hard time figure out versus a lay person trying to do some type of fraud claim and the thing that comes to my mind is just trial I mean you know we just finished a trial about two weeks ago it's a lot of work it's complicated the way that you have to present evidence get it admissible versus not admissible I mean the fact that you have really great evidence of fraud doesn't do you any good whatsoever if you can't get it admitted as evidence at time of trial so I think sometimes people think that in probate court you'll show up and you'll just hand your evidence to the judge and the judge will somehow make a decision that's not how it works there's a trial in probate court just like there isn't any other court and it's no different from personal injury or anything else so at some point you're going to have to have a trial that means you're going to have to have evidence admitted you're gonna have to question witnesses you're gonna have to probably have expert witnesses all of these complex issues have to come together in the form of a trial so you certainly could do it on your own I suppose people do represent themselves the trials I wouldn't recommend it well even before you to trial and I agree with everything you just said you're gonna have to plead a fraud cause of action which even young lawyers have a tough time you get the pleaded with specificity that's right and so just learning how to plead it and one other thing Keith I'll say and you can you you've you've been a part of these discussions we've had with clients there's many times we meet with people and these are these people have the best of intentions they're not dishonest in any way but they say mr. Davis and mr. Albertson I've got a slam-dunk case for you I've got a fraud case for you that I can prove three ways to Sunday and you and I look at them and say listen I appreciate that you really feel convinced that this is what happened but it's very rare we come across a case that is a quote-unquote slam dunk there are no slam dunk cases there's just not and no matter how great you think your evidence is somebody else can see that evidence in a different light that is going to cause you problems and so part of a lawyer's job is to structure the facts and the story and the narrative in a light that's most favorable to you into your side of the case and it's very important that somebody is able to do that and work with that so that you can put your best foot forward so it's not it's not an easy thing unfortunately I mean I wish it was easier for beneficiaries because a lot of beneficiaries get into problems and it's not easy to hire lawyers to take care of these issues but they're complex this is a complex area of the law it's far more complex than I think people realize until they're in the middle of it and then they're in the middle of it I think then they realize that man this is really it's a lot complicated well and I'll even I'll even say that you know there's a lot of personal injury attorneys out there that are very fine personal injury attorneys they're very smart there's even some defense attorneys out there and some of them will take these trusts in a state trust contest or a will contest on and they'll work it up a little bit and then they'll realize no no this is not something I'm taking the time to really understand it no and they'll give us a call right well there's a reason of Bin's it out there's a lot of ins and outs and these are people that are trained in the law right so I would say you know if there's not a lot at stake and you can't find a lawyer to take your case and you want to expand your horizons as an individual and learn something sure go ahead and give this a shot but it's it's gonna be brutal it's gonna be tough if there's a large amount of money at stake I think you need to hire a lawyer and this goes back to the whole point that many people that come and first see us they tell us hey we love you but why do we have to hire you to get work what we're already entitled to and with your response to that has always been I'm not sure what my response has always been but I'll tell you right now it's it's it's the process it's understanding the complexities it's the experience you're hiring experience at the end of the day well and what I was getting at is your response normally is along the lines of look look guys I know you don't like to have to hire a lawyer to resolve this matter for you but I don't see any other way you can do this because you have a right to something but it do you have it right no somebody's telling you no you're not gonna get it and so the only way to get that asset or get to what you're entitled to under a trust or a will is to seek court intervention and unfortunately that means hiring a lawyer yeah because then you have to go through the process so yeah you can have a right to something but until it's in your hand having the right to it doesn't really mean a whole lot right it's not what I usually say that's what you usually say that's really good yes remember I said it much better than you normally say so what's a nice question Kalyn and why don't you pose the next question down to cuz I'm keeping track here yeah this is a related question the trustee won't tell me how much is in the trust and is keeping everything secret how do I know what I'm entitled to as a beneficiary well that always is an interesting point so just because you're a beneficiary and just because you have a right to something doesn't necessarily mean that you know what that right is and so almost gosh I don't know maybe 95 percent of the time when a beneficiary calls us and wants to hire us on their case they don't know as much as we wish they knew they're in the dark with some aspect of their case either they don't know all the trust terms they don't know all the Trust property they don't know what the trustees been doing with the Trust property or how it's been invested they probably don't even know the full amounts in the bank accounts and financial accounts that if the trust is getting rent they don't know really how much rent or where it's going or how it's being used and they usually don't have any appraisals on the real property and we that's all information that a beneficiary is entitled to and we'd love to see it and have it but when you ask the beneficiaries when they first call us you know do you have this information the answer is no and I usually tell people well you're not alone you're in the dark but most beneficiaries are and so what do you do when you're in the dark well we always feel that the key here is to get the copy of the trust whatever version of the trust is the most operative after somebody passes away so if there's amendments if there's free statements or just an original trust we need that because that's the roadmap that's going to describe to us what that person's particular rights are under that trust document and then once we have that trust document well there's some rules under the probate code where we can ask the other side hopefully they'll have a lawyer please give us a just a rough approximation of the assets and liabilities and that's something that can quite quickly generally and then you start getting into some of the things we talked about under leader versus chords and that is hey there's three million dollars here you yes you've just started this trust administration but you don't need three million dollars to do this let's talk about a preliminary distribution and I think from my point of view to nine I think you would agree with this is that you know you need to send out and writing a request for all that information for sure but you need to get a petition in probate court as quickly as possible because once you're in probate court now the trustee can't play games they can't hide information from you they can't say oh I'll send you those bank statements but never do it once you're in court now not only will the judge order them to provide you with that information but you also get subpoena power so now you can subpoena the banks and brokerage firms directly and get the information and look at the original source documents so when it comes to you know my true the trustee is not responding to me or is keeping things secret or whatever the circumstance the ultimate solution for all of those problems is file a petition in court and demand that they hand it over and then once you're in court file subpoenas and then maybe depositions right yeah the best case scenario for somebody in this position I think is that they have lawyers that know what they're doing on their side and also the trustee gets a lawyer that knows what they're doing on there that's better than the two lawyers can get together and hopefully not be all that emotional and they speak the same language the same practice area and usually this stuff can be ticked off pretty easily from there there's nothing worse than a trustee it goes out and hires a lawyer who doesn't understand trust administration because then you get this adversarial you know them versus us relationship which is not the way trustees are supposed to act they're supposed to act in a way that's beneficial to the beneficiaries well think about it when you don't know any answer to a question Keith which is very rare by the way but when you don't know an answer to the question what's your default defensive no yeah actually with money yeah yeah I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do anything and then we're sitting there trying to explain to a personal injury attorney a defense attorney that doesn't have any real experience in this area we're trying to explain hey you know under leader versus court you need to make a distribution and they're thinking what are you doing yeah yeah you're trying to get one over on me we're not trying to trick you we're trying to tell you this is what you need to do right so it's much better when the trustee has a lawyer who knows trust administration because then when we call up and say hey we need this information if they're smart and they want their trustee to look reasonable which you they should want to keep them out of trouble the first thing they're gonna say is here you go right here's everything you asked for well and what's funny is we live in California I think there's what 40 million people here eight million households or something like that it's it's so many people and yet we know all the good trusts and estate litigators in the state and we run against them time and time and again he has not that many and we know who they are we're not best friends with any of them we get along with everybody but the point is is that we know who they are it's a small group of people right and if you find one of those people good things generally will happen in your case yeah and if you're a trustee you want that attorney representing you because they're gonna keep you out of hot water yes whereas another attorney who's going to make things their adversarial they're gonna get you into trouble right and then you know you're gonna be in in a world of hurt what's the next question Kaylin well it's never a good idea to sign anything that either releases the trustee of liability or waves and accounting until you first understand what's happening so I mean how do you go about that there's a safe way in a not safe way we're having technical difficulties let's see if we get this fixed still technical difficulties here we're seeing if we can get this resolved still working on this [Music] well we've lost our video we think we still have our audio going so yeah let's at least finish up the questions I beat it out there the question and then maybe we'll pick the rest up for next week but we're were wait what was the question again skaila Oh the signing it yeah so you don't want to sign a waiver or release until you have full disclosure of all the information that's super important and even under the pervy code 1604 point five you a trustee is not allowed to demand a release of liability in exchange for getting and distributions so if I was representing a trustee I would make sure a preliminary distribution goes out first right and then the trustee would voluntarily ask and that way you know at least if you're asking voluntarily they can do it now a beneficiary may want to sign a release of liability because the alternative is you'd have to go to court on a court accounting right and that can be expensive because you have to file it in court you have to pay for a CPA to prepare it and so it might be cheaper in the long run to just release the trustee of liability that's right but you don't you know you don't want to sign anything without first having it reviewed by a lawyer so at least have a consultation with somebody I agree with all of that I'm saying there's a safe way to do this and and then there's a little bit of a risky way it's not significantly risky but the safe way to do it is don't sign anything just go by the distribution a little bit of a risky way to do it is to simply sign and get what you're entitled to and then if you see something that's funny down the road later I think you can argue the hey number one I didn't have to sign this to get my distribution secondly I wasn't given all the facts all right this release and you didn't present to me all the data that I needed to know to give you a genuine release right but now you're in a position where you know a court could see it differently although I think most courts are going to give you the benefit of the doubt on that as a beneficiary and I've had a number not that many cases but I've had a full of cases where we were able to overturn a release because of that very scenario that's right but you'd rather not fight that fight you're better off to talk to a lawyer if you're asked to sign a release at least have a consultation with somebody and review all the financials of the trust and if you're comfortable with what you're seeing then go ahead and sign you know I was just it just hit me that looks like we got our video back but it just hit me that I remember many years ago I had a case where one nice thing to throw to the other a lawyer anytime they want to do something is do you have any authority for that right and many times you'll have lawyers that will shoot back right at you well what do you have any authority that I can't and this is this is exactly what we did on that case we said hey you sent us a release there's can you provide me any authority that we have to sign this prior to getting the distribution right and I got a snarky letter back well can you present me any evidence or any authority that you don't have to and I'm like glass so that can work out well right yeah that can work out well for you down the road and you probably should ask the trustee to give you a preliminary distribution before you sign - I mean you know that it should be an easy thing for them to do and it's reasonable right so right well I want to thank everybody for joining us today sorry we had a little technical difficulties there you weren't able to see our beautiful faces for a few minutes tragic I know it really is sad so we are live on the stand fight win live stream weekly you can find this as a recorded broadcast when we're done here on both Facebook and YouTube and you can also find an audio only version of this as our podcast on both iTunes and pod being I want to thank you very much for joining us I want to Stewart I want to thank our outstanding assistance and help us week in and week out we have the lovely Manisha here thank you and the lovely Kayla and they make this work for us we just kind of show up after lunch after we've had a nice lunch and sit down there's a microphone and we does my makeup in my hair we look forward we look forward to these actually weekly and we enjoy your questions feel free to send your questions in to us over the week we'll include them next week and or a week after that and we look forward to hopefully answering your questions absolutely all right you next time. 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