The Process of bringing a Trust lawsuit in California Probate Courts

Описание: Hi I'm, Elizabeth Talbot and this is Matthew Talbot and we're with the Talbot Law Group in Walnut Creek California and we are a trust and estate firm who specuialized in trust litigation. so one thing i wanted matthew to share with everyone today is the process of a trust litigation and what it looks like. i think most people think one ends up going directly to a trial when you file a lawsuit and that is actually not the case. yes, the court process can often take some time. for example, let's say you think your brother, who is managing the trust for your mom, may have misappropriated or stolen money. Your goal might be to get an accounting of trust assets, get your brother removed as trustee, and have money returned to the trust. so the first thing that would be done, generally, is to provide a letter to your brother or their attorney outlining what it is that you want. and maybe from there you can work together to resolve these issues. however, that is not the case in most of these circumstances. in most circumstances you have to go to court. so you would go to court to remove the person as trustee, seek an accounting of his management of the assets, and have them return funds to the trust. so, you would put a petition together that would outline these things and you would file that with the court. the court hearing would be set an average of couple of months out. that is just the first hearing, however, it is not a trial, it is just a status hearing to tell the judge where you are. the court often relies on and looks to the attorneys to do the heavy lifting. it is the attorneys who must ask the questions, find the answers, find the evidence, and work to try to bring the parties together if possible. so, if you were to file this first petition with the court asking for these various things, what would you find would happen at that first court hearing? well, it's likely the judge would just continue the matter to allow the parties to try to settle or mediate the case. and mediation is a process where the parties get a professional mediator to try to help them work out their differences. if they cannot go to mediation or they believe mediation will not work, than the judge may be more likely to set the trial. but this usually does not happen right away, correct? it takes several hearings and normally once you file a petition often the other side will then file an objection to your petition as well. is that correct? yes, there may also be counter petitions filed. so the pieces of paper can stack up. the vast majority of cases do end up settling especially at mediation. so the goal in a trust litigation is to file the petition, get as much evidence as you can, and then go to mediation and see if you can work out a deal. This is usually ideal because the process of trial can be very expensive, time consuming and also usually has an unclear result.