General

We have a client who is facing a dilemma that can best be described as heart wrenching. I’ll call her Wilma (not her real name). Wilma is a widow. She is retired with a reasonable income from her late husband’s military pension. She owns her own modest home, and does not have any large debts, just a few small credit card balances. And she has some cash in the bank, though less than $100,000. She has no living family members.

Wilma doesn’t have a Power of Attorney, Health Care Advanced Directives, Living Will, or Last Will & Testament in place. She […]

I hung up the phone with Reba and called the local police department where Willy lived. By chance, the sergeant answered the phone — the same sergeant with whom I had been communicating all along. I explained to him the details of that morning’s phone call and the predictable reaction of the family members upon hearing this terrible pronouncement. The sergeant’s response startled me.

“I’m not going to send anyone up there,” his gruff voice sounding like an impersonation of a gangster from a 1940’s movie. “You’re not?” I responded. “No,” he said slowly. “I’m gonna go up there myself.” He […]

We wanted to get Mom out of Willy’s house, as it was late in the fall and the house had no central heat.  We realized that Willy was holding mom against her will, but it was lining up as a “he said, she said” family fight that no one wanted to get in the middle of. It appears that Willy wanted to keep mom there with him so that he could take mom to the bank from time to time in order for her to get money out of her own account, treating her like a human ATM card.

We contacted […]

Willy* filed a cease and desist order on each of his sisters, citing spurious reasons to keep them away from his house (and mom). We also alerted the Office of Aging in McKean County of the sad state of affairs. They sent workers to Willy’s house to visit with mom. The local police accompanied the two Office of Aging workers. The police had been called to Willy’s home before. His neighbors had called them when Willy was being less-than-safe with his firearms a few times in the past.

The sisters reported to the Office of Aging that mom had no change […]

We were asked to help administer an estate for a woman who told us she was the only living heir of her father. We thought that it would be a simple intestate estate administration, which means that there is no Last Will & Testament. We began discussing her father’s estate when I learned that the daughter sitting in front of me was not an only child. Her father had another child, a son, who used to live with them, but the son left over two years ago and has not been heard from since.

As we discussed the disappearing son, the […]

We were asked to help administer an estate in which two siblings, who cannot agree whether the sun rises in the east, were the main beneficiaries. The estate was not too large, under a million dollars, and had as many non-probate assets as probate assets. The hope was that we could navigate the waters peacefully.

One of the siblings was the named executor of the Last Will & Testament. The other, non-executor sibling, brought the paperwork to his attorney (not Mateya Law Firm; we were brought in to try to restore the peace) without the executor’s knowledge. Wait, shouldn’t that Attorney […]