Probate Attorneys

Keystone represented a client in her 70s who unknowingly created an irrevocable trust while overly medicated by her son. The son made himself trustee and misappropriated trust assets. At the initial hearing, Keystone’s probate attorneys persuaded the court to immediately suspend the son as trustee and replace him with a private professional fiduciary. Our client’s property was ultimately returned to her as well.

Keystone first helped its client get appointed as the administrator of her brother’s $50 million estate. Later, Keystone assisted with litigating against the decedent’s two pseudo-caregivers who collectively unduly influenced and defrauded the decedent. In total, Keystone’s probate lawyers were able to help the estate secure the return of more than $2 million in stolen money and property, and obtain a judgment for an additional $1 million.

Keystone helped its client obtain an emergency temporary conservatorship over her mother, who had advanced Alzheimer’s disease and was being kept inside her brother’s home, which was suspected to be a hotbed of COVID-19 cases. As a result, Keystone’s client, over the objection of her brother, was able to remove her mother from the home and into a safe, secure location.

Keystone’s client was the trustee of his sister and brother-in-law’s trust. Because it contained language that was ambiguous in terms of who should receive the primary asset of the trust, the decedent’s home, the client was uncertain how to distribute it. Keystone’s probate lawyers helped the client obtain the clarification he needed to fairly distribute the property according to the trust’s terms and extrinsic evidence.

Keystone’s client sought to invalidate a trust after learning that the decedent from whom they stood to inherit had left the entirety of his estate to a new partner he had just met off a dating site who was 50 years his junior and an ostensible predator. Not long after amending his trust, the abuser died under suspicious circumstances. Ultimately, Keystone was able to reach a favorable settlement for its clients that called for the new version of the trust to be invalidated by arguing that the gift to the partner was an illegal payment for prostitution and the partner’s actions constituted financial elder abuse.