Protecting Your Parent…How Can You Protect a Parent Without Making Them Mad?

[Music] How does Keith Davidson at Albertson and Davidson in this video I want to talk about how do you protect a parent who you think is being abused by a trustee of the revocable trust or some bad actor you might think that your parent lacks capacity to be able to manage their own financial affairs or perhaps you think that they're subject to undue influence and being manipulated the problem with revocable trusts in California is that while the person who has the power to revoke meaning your parent while that person is alive and as capacity only the parent has a right to take actions against the trustee or against the trust you might be a named beneficiary who's going to receive assets after your parents death but that status as a successor beneficiary does not give you any rights to take action now it only gives you rights to take action later once the trust becomes irrevocable which is usually when a parent dies so what do you do to protect the parent now well unfortunately about the only way that you can do it is to go in and file for either a conservatorship action or for a determination under the trust document that your parent lacks capacity whether you do conservatorship or the trust action you're going to have to go into court and you're gonna have to allege to the court that you think your parent lacks capacity or subject to undue influence now this may not be surprising to you but a lot of parents don't like to be told they lack capacity they find that a little insulting or they don't like to be told that they're subject to undue influence because they think they're not and so the minute you go to court and you tell the court my mom or my dad is lacking capacity your mom and your dad's not going to be very happy with you and that means that if they do have capacity your mom or dad can change the trust because if they still have the power to revoke the trust they can also amend it and they can disinherit you so what are you to do as a child do you risk being disinherited to try and save your parent or do you sit back and let the be taken advantage of and think well I'll only take action after my parent dies once my rights vest under the trust document it's not an easy decision and there's no right answers if you are going to go into court on either a conservatorship action or trust action and claim that your parent lacks capacity you had better be right so that means you want some good evidence of dementia Alzheimer's hopefully some sort of a medical declaration from the doctor that supports your contention because if you go into court and you are right and the court says yes there's a lack of capacity here then you'll be given the power to be conservator or you'll be given the power to be successor trustee if you're named a successor trustee and no amendments can take place once there's a conservatorship or once there's a determination that your parent lacks capacity but if you go into court and you make those allegations and you're wrong and the court says no we don't find a lack of capacity well then you have a real problem on your hands because not only are you not going to be able to act for your parent but you're probably going to be disinherited when the parent gets mad at you for having taken that action in the first place again these are not easy decisions and so I strongly recommend that you talk to a lawyer think about what your options are talk about what the costs are going to be and some of the consequences and think to yourself what evidence do you have that a lack of capacity exists in your case because you're going to need all the evidence you can get your hands on. [Music] [Applause] [Music]