Grossman Law Firm Blog

Dad's dumb move prevents son from inheriting

A grieving son contacted me because his father's second wife's niece received his father's property. His father had gotten married for the second time and created a revocable living trust. The trust was a typical A-B trust.

The second wife tried to carry out the terms of the trust. She began the process to fund the two subtrusts after her husband's death but she died before she could fund the subtrusts. Before her death, she realized her late husband had taken a large bank accounts out of the trust and retitled it so that he held it with her is joint tenants. She recognized that he intended for this bank account to be part of the trust and she wanted to honor her husband's wishes. The second wife died before this could be done and that large bank account never made its way back into the trust.

The second wife's niece became the trustee after she died. The second wife's niece convinced her to put her on bank account as a joint tenant. When her aunt died, the bank account passed to the niece as the surviving joint tenant.

The father's son simply couldn't believe what he found out. Unlike most cases that are ripe for trust litigation, this one didn't have an obvious bad guy. All the mistakes this man's father made, he made on his own. While there are lots of legitimate reasons to begin trust litigation, you just can't win because someone did something dumb.

The Grossman Law Firm, A.P.C. are Palm Springs, California probate lawyers.  We help probate estates in Riverside County, California.  We appear in the Palm Springs probate court for cases from Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Desert Hot Springs, Cathedral City, Indian Wells, Indio, Banning and Beaumont California. We appear in the Riverside probate court for cases in the area bounded by Temecula, Corona, and Hemet, California.  If you  would like more information on probate and trust administration then order our free book The Insider's Guide to California Probate and Trust Administration as well as our free DVD Probate a Will or Administer a Trust After the Death of a Loved One.