Trust litigation can't be won because your parent did something dumb

You can't win a trust litigation case because your parent did something dumb. Parents, if you really want to screw up your trust and make sure that your children have a reason to fight after you are dead then make sure you title your property in joint tenancy instead of your revocable living trust. This works particularly well for people who are in their second, or later, marriages.

A grieving son contacted me because he couldn't understand why it was his father's second wife's niece seems to have all of his property. As he explained things to me, his father had gotten married for the second time and had the wisdom to create a revocable living trust in which to hold all of his property. The trust was a typical A-B trust. As expected, his father died before his second wife.

The second wife was a decent person and she tried to carry out the terms of the trust. She began the process to fund the two subtrusts after her husband's death. Unfortunately, her health rapidly declined after her husband's death and she was never able to complete the process of funding the two subtrusts. In fact, before her death, she realized her late husband had taken a large bank account out of the trust and retitled it so that he held it with her as 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. She even wrote a letter to the attorney who was helping her to fund the two subtrusts saying the bank account should be put into one of the subtrusts.

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 never had any children. Her niece was appointed the successor trustee of the trust. The second wife's niece was very "helpful" to her aunt while she was still alive. In order to "help" her aunt, the niece convinced her to put her on bank account as a joint tenant. When her aunt died, the niece was in complete control. The bank account, which was no longer a trust asset passed to the niece as the surviving joint tenant.