The question is, “Can you force a mediation if you’re a party to a trust or will lawsuit?” The answer is probably not. You certainly can go to mediation by agreement of the parties. But if you want to go to mediation and the other side does not, you cannot force them. Keep in mind, […]
Many clients have asked us, “What happens at a mediation? This is a general response. You will go to a central location in, for example, Los Angeles, to a mediation center. You’ll be put in one room with your lawyer or lawyers. Your brother or sister or whoever you are litigating against will be put […]
How does a mediation happen? It happens one of two ways. The first way is by agreement of the parties involved in the lawsuit. That generally means the lawyers that represent the opposing sides will have talked and assessed whether mediation is a good idea. They will have gone back to their clients, and asked, […]
You have filed a lawsuit in your trust and estate litigation matter. You’ve done copious amounts of written discovery. There have been four or five depositions in your case, and the judge orders you to mediation. You look to your lawyer and say, “What is mediation?” Mediation is a forum for you to settle your […]
I’m going to tell you why you are wrong today if you think that your parents would never disinherit you. If you receive a trust or will after a parent dies, and you’ve been disinherited, it could be that there are grounds to try and overturn that trust or will if your parent lacked capacity […]
I want to tell you why you are incorrect today if you think that your parent’s trust document is recorded somewhere. Trusts are private documents. They don’t get recorded anywhere. They don’t get recorded with the County Recorder’s Office. They’re not kept with some government agency. A lot of times the attorneys who draft them […]
A lot of people in California are confused by the issue of taxes on inheritance. Generally speaking, anything that you receive as an inheritance in California is not subject to tax. In other words, It’s not subject to income tax nor capital gains tax. Basically, it’s tax free money. There is an exception for estate […]
I want to talk about why you are wrong today. If you think that the trust is going to pay for your attorney’s fees, you are mistaken, unfortunately. If you’re the beneficiary of a trust, you may think that the trust should have to pay for the beneficiary’s lawyer. That’s not going to happen. I […]
When you hire a lawyer on contingency, that means that you are paying the lawyer a percentage of whatever is recovered. You essentially are making that lawyer a partner with you in your case. It’s no different in a lot of ways from having a business partner. Except now your business partner is a lawyer […]
What are some of the reasons why a parent might disinherit a child? A lot of times we think that a parent will disinherit a child because a child was bad: the child was abusive to the parent, or became a drug addict, or acted irresponsibly somehow. That certainly can be the basis for a […]
