It should go without saying that when you are looking for an attorney to set up your estate plan, especially if you have children you want to pass along money or possessions to, you need to feel absolutely comfortable that whatever documents are set up are done with your best interest in mind.
This is pretty much the opposite of what is happening to one Redditor, according to their post in r/inheritance. Somehow, this “lawyer” convinced the Redditor that the lawyer’s wife should be named the co-trustee, and they now have a right to their personal property along with his daughter.
This Is a Major Problem
According to the Redditor’s post, this individual sought out a lawyer in California and, being unfamiliar with trust law, was convinced to sign documents that allowed the lawyer’s wife to be named as a co-trustee. The sheer number of alarm bells this should have rung for the Redditor is unmistakable, but somehow, they were convinced to go along with everything, and now there is a trust that allows the lawyer’s wife to be the co-trustee with their daughter.
This means that the lawyer’s wife is entitled to the personal property of the Redditor as well as receiving paid compensation for executing the trust if and when the Redditor passes away. As a result of this scenario, the Redditor came to r/inheritance to see if this set off alarm bells for anyone else.
This Is So, So Wrong
To be fair, this scenario is wild, and if I knew this individual, I would have them in a lawyer’s office the next day to revoke the prior trust, report the original attorney to the California Bar Association, and have a new attorney draw up proper documents that will protect both the Redditor and his daughter.
I’m not a lawyer or a financial advisor, so I’m not 100% familiar with what kind of language should be in a will or trust beyond what’s in my own. However, it doesn’t take an expert in any field to recognize that what this lawyer did is 10 different levels of shady. The breach of ethics here is borderline criminal and would likely result in disbarment for this individual or a suspension of their license to practice law, given the strong likelihood that they have previously engaged in similar actions against other individuals.
The good news is that just about all of the comments in this Reddit post, which almost never universally agree, all do agree that this entire scenario needs to be reported and that a new lawyer should be drawing up the right kind of documents immediately. There is zero question that the daughter doesn’t need to be familiar with trust law to be a trustee; this was nothing more than a snake oil pitch by a conning lawyer intent on preying on this individual’s naivety about what they were signing.
How to Move Forward
To recap all the steps the Redditor needs to take, here is the exact advice I would give a friend if they were in a similar situation. First and foremost, this individual needs to take a copy of this document to another lawyer, who they receive a referral to and that have a positive reputation for doing the right thing for clients. The good news is that lawyers aren’t all as bad as television shows portray them to be, and in California, the Redditor should have no shortage of options.
The next step is to work with this new lawyer to revoke the existing trust and ensure that the original lawyer’s wife has no access to anything the Redditor owned yesterday, today, or tomorrow. Once the new documents are in place, the Redditor should breathe easy that their daughter is protected for the future and that this other lawyer has no ability to refute these new documents at any time in the future.
Lastly, absolutely report the first lawyer to the California Bar and take them to the cleaners. This isn’t about stirring the pot, but it is about protecting the next potential victim from being in a similar situation and not knowing to come to Reddit to ask for help.
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