Six Real Life Trust Litigation Cases. CASE #2

Intro

CASE #2: Failure to account for a phony trust

George the “Trustee” & Disbarred Attorney Attempt to Scam my Clients

I represented some people who were swindled into transferring some real estate they owned into a trust in exchange for some paper they were told were “gold shares”. The trustee of the trust, “George” for purposes of discussion, was a real piece of work who together with a disbarred attorney created all sorts of good-looking legal documentation to cover up what was in effect a theft scheme. Part of trust formation was that the trustors transferred ownership of assets and properties into the name of George as the trustee.

In this situation my clients became suspicious and asked me to look into the situation. Using my knowledge of real estate, I was able to obtain a copy of the deed to the property in question so we knew where was and how it was identified. I then sent a legal demand to George for an accounting of the assets of the trust. George refused to account for anything and refused to provide any information. I then filed a petition with the probate court explaining the situation in detail complete with my correspondence back and forth to George.

I was very surprised when at the initial court hearing, the first words out of the Judge’s mouth were, “I am removing the trustee immediately for his failure to produce an accounting and the trustee is ordered to immediately turn over to the petitioners all of the books and records of the trust.”. The judge then ordered George to file a proper accounting with the court within 30 days and appointed my clients as the trustees of the trust. My clients were then able to get their property removed from the trust and back into their hands. Another one for the “Good Guys!”