Your probate attorney should not be your conservatorship attorney

Your probate attorney should not be your conservatorship attorney. More accurately, if your conservatorship attorney allowed your loved one to die without telling you how to avoid probate then that attorney should not be your probate attorney. In California, conservatorships require the filing of an inventory and appraisal with the probate court. The inventory and appraisal puts everybody involved in the conservatorship on notice how property is held as well as its value. This means your conservatorship attorney knows whether your loved one's property is held in their name or in the name of their trust (if they have a trust.)

If the conservatorship attorney knows that your loved one has substantial assets and does not recommend the creation of a trust as a probate avoidance device when your loved one passes away then the conservatorship attorney failed to provide you with an important alternative. He or she should have advised you that there is a way to petition the probate court for the creation of a trust to hold those assets. If the conservatorship attorney didn't advise you of this procedure while your loved one was still alive then you have to ask yourself why not. There are very few good reasons this topic should not have been raised while your loved one was still alive. A cynic might say that the topic of creating a trust didn't come up because the conservatorship attorney believed that when your loved one died you would return to him or her for the probate of their estate.

If this is your situation then understand you are not obligated to use any particular attorney for the probate of your loved one's estate. You do not have to use the conservatorship attorney. You have no obligation to that attorney: legal, financial, or moral. You can choose any attorney you want to represent you in the probate. You would be well advised to change attorneys given your conservatorship attorney's failure to advise you of the options that were available while your loved one was still alive.

The failure to advise a client during the course of the case is a particularly egregious error. The conservatorships take place in the probate court. The particular probate court that supervise your loved one's conservatorship is probably the same court, with the same judge, that will hear the probate of your loved one's estate. Anyone who has spent any time acting as conservatory knows only too well how difficult things can be in probate court. There is no reason to reward an attorney who failed to give you the option of avoiding probate court when your loved one died.

The Grossman Law Firm, A.P.C. are San Bernardino, California probate lawyers.  We help probate estates in San Bernardino County, California.  We appear in the Redlands probate court for cases from Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Fontana, Rialto, San Bernardino, Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley, Loma Linda and Redlands, 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.