Orange County Estate Planning Lawyer Blog
Intro
CASE #1: Getting even for being tied up to a tree
Payback for traumatic childhood prank!
There were three sisters who were trust beneficiaries of their dad’s trust. One of the sisters was the trustee and administered their dad’s trust after he passed away. When the trustee sister was seven years old, her other two sisters who were older tied her up to a tree in the backyard and left her out there all night.
She never forgot that and “got even” – when she was administering the trust. She refused to make any distributions for several years and failed to account for rents that were collected on apartments and failed to provide any accounting for the money until the other beneficiaries through my office filed a breach of trust petition with the probate court.
The trust petition case was ultimately settled by requiring the trust assets to be distributed and requiring the trustee sister to pay back to the trust money that she had wrongfully taken.
