Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Massachusetts

Re: Lawyers are taking it all

If a house is sold under a court ordered sale, the court may appoint a master or

receiver to

sell the house. All claims for expenses must be ruled upon by the judge.

Alan Pransky

Law Office of Alan J. Pransky

20 Eastbrook Road

Re: Lawyers are taking it all

In whose name (legal title) was the house? (I can

look up the deed if you tell me the name and address.)

If it was

your mother's name, then the next question is this: who

was the appointed executor of your mother's estate? Did

she leave a will? Someone has to be assigned legal

responsibility for her estate and it appears that it

wasn't you and you didn't ask for it to be; you should

have been notified (were you not?) before any major actions

being taken by other lawyers or by the court were decided

upon.

Luckily, in Probate law, it's not too late to start getting

involved, while the assets are still undistributed. But each

procedure / issue / case in probate that you let slip by,

you lose ground on.

You do need a lawyer, probably, to handle the

intricacies of probate procedure

to get your objectives accomplished for you.

If you do

get a competent probate lawyer involved soon enough,

you might:

1) keep the other lawyer's fees in check, 2) get something

for all that you put into the house to make it saleable,

in all likelihood.

However, don't be ready to battle yet! That lawyer may only have

been appointed to make sure that you didn't sell the house and

run off with all the assets by yourself. Also, that lawyer's fees

need to be reasonable and will have to be approved by a judge; you

probably can be heard on that issue by the judge prior to his issueing

orders to pay that lawyer, and you would certainly

point out that you fixed up the place and the buyer was found before

that lawyer jumped in. (Get your written documentation of all that

together and have it handy. Make sure you can prove also what you told

that lawyer and when.)

Similarly, you can petition the judge to

pay your 'fees' for the care you took of the house, although you should

probably have gotten the court's permission first before you did all

that work.

There are bigger fish to fry than whether one or another lawyer gets any

fees out of this from your sister's point of view, don't you think?

Now, what city do you live in / what Probate court are you in?

Do you want to call me to answer some of the above questions and

figure out where you stand?

I don't charge for the phone call.

tel. (617) 527-0050.

fax -1763

or write to me!

Stuart Williams

Law Offices of Stuart J. Williams

21 Walter St.

Newton, MA

02459-2509

e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

Re: Lawyers are taking it all

The answer depends on who owns the house, and what the court has ordered. If you owned the house, then you had the right to list it and sell it. If you did not own the house, then you had no authority to sell the parts that did not belong to you. When your sister sued for partition, did you answer the complaint? Did you go to court? If not, the Court may have ordered the sale on your sister's terms.

Worst case, you could end up paying a realtor's fee for a transaction that will not go through, and one fourth of the fee as your share. You also could be sued by your buyer if the transaction does not go through. You could concieveably have to pay your siblings in the end, and be liable to your buyer if you cannot make that transaction work. You need to speak with an attorney to see if your liability can be minimized. You could end up paying many thousands of dollars. Do not delay. I can speak with you, at (508) 822-777. No fee to just talk about your problem.

Thomas Workman

Law Offices of Thomas Workman

41 Harrison Street, Taunton, MA