Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

Re: Dispersal of Estate

The attorney trustee at issue has fiduciary duties of due care and loyalty to all beneficiaries of the trust. As a beneficiary, you are entitled to an accounting of assets making up the trust, as well as income and expense reports. It CERTAINLY would not "hurt" to retain your own legal counsel here if you feel in the dark or that the trustee is breaching any of the aformentioned duties.

Re: Dispersal of Estate

I assume that you mean the lawyer is the administrator of the estate, as a trustee is in charge of a trust, such as a living trust that partially takes the place of a Will. The law establishes what an administrator can charge and if he claims extraordinary services he must petition the probate judge for approval of those additional costs. You can object, although unless the judge knows the attorney to be dishonest, he will be inclined to grant the attorney/adm. request. He must ask for court approval to appoint an attorney to help him; you could object that he should already know the law but he will counter that he should be paid as an attorney when he does something as an attorney and not the administrator. Have you asked him for a copy of the Will; if he has filed for probate you can look at the Courthouse file [sometimes can do so on the Court's web site] and see the Will and other documents. You have not mentioned how much the estate is worth and whether your mother, his wife, is still alive. Remember that California is a community property state; if there is no wife and the Will does not state who gets what, then it is evenly divided among all of his children, but the grandkids get nothing unless they are directly named in the Will and it states what they are getting [and that still exists at the time he dies]. With 5 kids to split the value of the estate up, the house will have to be sold unless all of you can come to some type of agreement. You will however, only pay capital gains tax on the difference between the sales price and the fair market value on your father's death. So you may very well may want to sell the house. Some times, if you are nice you can get specific information from the research clerk/probate examiner in the Probate Department. Good luck.

Re: Dispersal of Estate

yes, you should retain your own attorney. if your father had a will, a probate petition should have been filed with the superior court (unless the estate contained no valuable real property and its total value was less than $100,000). if he had a trust, it is likely that a notice to beneficiaries is required as to any part of the trust that became irrevocable at death.