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Answered in 21 minutes by:
6/9/2014
socrateaser, Attorney
Category: Estate Law
Satisfied Customers: 41,454
Experience: If you're looking for an educated guess, any lawyer here will do. If you're looking for a legally correct and independently verifiable answer, then I'm the lawyer you want.
VerifiedWhy would a probate Judge require bond to protect my mothers share of the estate and I would have to go through these steps to get $70,000.00 she stole.
A: An "inter-vivos revocable" trust (which is the legal name for the commonly known, "living trust"), is subject to entirely different rules than those which apply to a probate estate and a last will and testament.
The trust is governed by the terms and conditions of the document itself, while the Will and probate estate are governed by the Texas Probate Code.
Consequently, if the trust permits the trustee (presumably your sister) to reimburse for attorney's fees, then the trustee can do so, and the court has absolutely nothing to say about the issue -- unless, someone, such as yourself, challenges the reimbursements as misappropriations of trust property.
This explains why you are in the situation you're in. You have to come out of your pocket to pay for a challenge to the trustee's expenditures, whereas your sister can simply plunder the trust to pay legal expenses, unless and until she is proved to have committed a wrongful act.
Unfortunately, in many cases, the result of all of this is that the trust is wiped out, and the only person who wins is the attorneys who represent the trustee and contesting beneficiary. To be frank, most estate beneficiaries and trustees realize far too late that the best solution to a dispute over estate and trust assets is to settle as fast as possible on a relatively equal split. Because, in retrospect, most of the money ends up bled out to lawyers.
Obviously, I'm a lawyer, so I could just smile (virtually speaking) and make up some BS here to protect the members of my profession. But, I just happen to be one of those lawyers who doesn't have much respect for my peers, or their conduct in most cases. Because, in most cases, attorneys "blow smoke" and the clients on both sides of the dispute get the raw end of the deal as a consequence.
Please let me know if my answer is helpful. And, thanks for using justanswer.com!
A: An "inter-vivos revocable" trust (which is the legal name for the commonly known, "living trust"), is subject to entirely different rules than those which apply to a probate estate and a last will and testament.
The trust is governed by the terms and conditions of the document itself, while the Will and probate estate are governed by the Texas Probate Code.
Consequently, if the trust permits the trustee (presumably your sister) to reimburse for attorney's fees, then the trustee can do so, and the court has absolutely nothing to say about the issue -- unless, someone, such as yourself, challenges the reimbursements as misappropriations of trust property.
This explains why you are in the situation you're in. You have to come out of your pocket to pay for a challenge to the trustee's expenditures, whereas your sister can simply plunder the trust to pay legal expenses, unless and until she is proved to have committed a wrongful act.
Unfortunately, in many cases, the result of all of this is that the trust is wiped out, and the only person who wins is the attorneys who represent the trustee and contesting beneficiary. To be frank, most estate beneficiaries and trustees realize far too late that the best solution to a dispute over estate and trust assets is to settle as fast as possible on a relatively equal split. Because, in retrospect, most of the money ends up bled out to lawyers.
Obviously, I'm a lawyer, so I could just smile (virtually speaking) and make up some BS here to protect the members of my profession. But, I just happen to be one of those lawyers who doesn't have much respect for my peers, or their conduct in most cases. Because, in most cases, attorneys "blow smoke" and the clients on both sides of the dispute get the raw end of the deal as a consequence.
Please let me know if my answer is helpful. And, thanks for using justanswer.com!
socrateaser, Attorney
Category: Estate Law
Satisfied Customers: 41,454
Experience: If you're looking for an educated guess, any lawyer here will do. If you're looking for a legally correct and independently verifiable answer, then I'm the lawyer you want.
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