A Legal MinuteCautionary tales
How Inexperience Turned a Probate Case Into Chaos
The short answer
In one case discussed on the podcast, a dispute over an estate totaling under $300,000, by the speaker's account, became four years of probate litigation. Much of the escalation, in her view, came from a sibling's lawyer unfamiliar with probate, and from a lack of knowledge, understanding and transparency by that sibling and lawyer.
From the full episode Real-Life Probate Horror Stories & Lessons Learned (20:29).
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Transcript
That started off a four-year probate litigation matter. And what really contributed to this matter getting completely out of hand was actually sibling A's counsel. Sibling A's counsel was not familiar with probate. He was hired because sibling A knew him from a different matter, for a different thing that was not probate, not guardianship, and just said, "Hey, you want to come over and help me with this?" And he was like, "Sure, it can't be hard."
And so the lack of knowledge, understanding, and transparency that occurred from her and her counsel just, I mean, talk about a dumpster fire that you just tossed a can of gas in. It was constant.
And so that case was really difficult because the estate was not a large estate. This was not $10 million we're fighting over, okay? This was less than 300,000 aggregate, okay? This is not a large estate.
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