Must I Beg? How to receive your inheritance.

In this video, partner Keith A. Davidson discusses how hard it can be to receive your inheritance from a California Trust.

The following is a transcript of this video:

In this video, I want to discuss why it may be hard for you to receive your inheritance. So let’s say that you’re a named beneficiary in your parents trust and you’re supposed to be getting something right now. Outright. No more trust. You should be handed your share. Maybe it’s half a million, maybe it’s a million, maybe it’s five million. Whatever it is, you should be getting your share. And, yet, you’re not getting it. And maybe a year goes by and then two years and then three years and you still have not received your inheritance.

Why is it so hard for some people to receive what they should be receiving? And the answer really goes back to bad trustees. So, typically, a sibling might be appointed as a trustee, and that sibling doesn’t understand what they’re duties are. Or maybe you have warring beneficiaries. So a couple beneficiaries are fighting with each other. They can’t agree on anything. And it just causes the whole thing to become a big mess, a morass of trust administration.

But there are ways the good trustees can break through that morass and get things done. One tool they can use is a Notice of Proposed Action. Or, they can actually just go to court and ask the judge to start issuing orders. There’s ways to break through deadlocks even among trust beneficiaries. But, the key here is, if you’re the beneficiary who should be receiving money or assets, and you’ve waited a long time, a year, two years, three years, or more, and you’re not receiving your inheritance, that’s a problem. So if you’re thinking, gosh, after a year or two, shouldn’t this be done. The answer is yeah, it probably should be done. And if you’re thinking that’s not right, you’re probably correct. That’s not right.

But, unfortunately, it’s up to you as the beneficiary to do something about it. And you really can’t do anything about it outside of court because there’s no way to force the trustee or the other beneficiaries to do the right thing. But once you file in court, now you’ve got all the powers of the court behind you. You can issue subpoenas, you can take depositions. And you can ask the judge to issue orders. And that is where you start to see light at the end of the tunnel, because you can get the whole process moving. So, unfortunately, it’s going to be incumbent upon you as the beneficiary who’s not receiving your inheritance to step in and clean up this mess. But, the good news is, there is a way to do it and we’ve done it hundreds upon hundreds of time. We know it works and we know how to get it done.