The grieving Harry Berkowitz could hardly have imagined what would follow when he had three hats to wear under the law after his wife died in 2011. Her death triggered the creation of a marital trust that contained a General…
Trustee May Self-Represent to Determine Settlor Intent
It takes a particular type of family dysfunction for brothers and sisters to take their fight to courtroom after courtroom after courtroom for 12 years. Meet the Donkin clan. Back before everybody squared off before their first judge, parents Rodney…
Grandma Can Amend Trust Despite False Beliefs
Is it real—or did grandma lack of capacity to amend a trust? It’s the painful question asked when a loved ones’ behavior seems to be on the edge of the shadowlands. It’s worse if its sad aftermath obscures a family’s…
Dad’s Last Wishes Survive Tammy’s Last Stand
Frank and Louise Gomez’s love story sounds like something out of Hollywood. He proposed, she accepted. Yet before they could marry, Frank gets called up to go to war. Fearing that he may not return from Korea, Frank calls off…
Grandson Had a Right to Notice That He Got the Heave-Ho
McKie Roth died in 1988 with a will that established a trust for his wife, Yvonne. Upon her death, the trustee was to distribute twenty-five percent of the trust assets to her son from a prior marriage and twenty-five percent…
Kids Prevail Over Christian School, Church, Ole Miss, and Boykin Spaniels
Barry Blackburn was fighting late-stage cancer when he asked his aide for a will to preserve his “family legacy”: hundreds of acres of farmland and lakefront properties in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee that had been in the Blackburn family since…
Estate Planning Corner: Subtrusts, Tax Planning and More
When is a Win not a Win? Leland Babbitt’s estate was divided into two subtrusts upon his death–one for his wife Mary Lynne and the other for his daughter from a prior marriage, Carol. Mary Lynne was entitled to the…