What Happened
A year after his wife died, an aging father reached out to his late wife’s former caregiver to arrange caregiving services for himself. Instead, the caregiver introduced him to her mother, setting off a whirlwind of unfortunate events.
One month after meeting, the father and the caregiver’s mother married in Las Vegas. Nine days later, the new wife took him to an estate planning attorney, where he restated the trust he had created with his late wife, leaving nearly all of his assets to his new wife instead of dividing them among his children and grandchildren, as originally intended.
Under the new estate plan, rather than receiving 40% of her parents’ estate as she was before, our client would receive just $20,000 total and would no longer be successor trustee.
With the new estate plan in place, the new wife immediately began isolating the father from his children. The same month he restated his trust, she moved him out of the house he had shared with his late wife for 48 years and into her daughter’s house (the house of his late wife’s former caregiver). At this point, our client could no longer speak with or see her father.
His personal property, including his cars, was taken, and the two real properties he owned were now held by him and his new wife as co-trustees of the restated trust. In a matter of months, he was stripped of all the people and possessions that previously had defined his life.
How Keystone Was Able to Help
Dumbfounded by the turn of events that led to her near disinheritance, our client retained Keystone to contest the trust that her father’s new wife had convinced her father to execute — essentially diverting almost all his assets to her only a month after they met — and to bring an elder financial abuse claim against her, the caregiver (her daughter) and the caregiver’s husband. While the caregiver and her husband initially retained counsel and objected to Keystone’s petition, the new wife evaded service.
His new wife then ramped up the isolation by “moving” him to the Philippines, her country of residence, the following month. This relocation was surprising and entirely out of character for our client’s father, who disliked traveling, lacked any connection to the Philippines and faced health concerns — making the move highly suspicious.
Our client turned to the police for help amid growing concern that her father was being financially abused, but their hands were tied since he was out of the country. Tragically, our client never had the opportunity to say goodbye, as her father died in the Philippines a few months after the move.
In her final act of greed and deception, the new wife cremated him the day after his death without notifying his children. Approximately seven months after first meeting our client’s father, the new wife had gained control of nearly the entirety of our client’s parents’ estate.
After preparing and prevailing on the motion to allow the evasive wife to be served by publication, discovery began. During this process, subpoenaed records confirmed that the new wife had orchestrated the creation and execution of the restated trust.
Strategic and thoughtful in its approach, Keystone served written discovery on all three respondents with questions designed to lay the foundation for a motion for summary judgment. When none of the respondents responded, Keystone filed motions to have the requests for admissions deemed admitted. The court obliged, and the requests for admission were deemed admitted against all three defendants — a major victory for our client and the crucial first step toward resolving the matter through a summary judgment motion.
With its arsenal loaded, Keystone went in for the final strike — a motion for summary judgment. If successful, the motion would fully grant Keystone’s petition and restore our client’s rightful inheritance without the need for a costly trial.
The motion was a success. Just two years after our client first sought help, Keystone secured a court order invalidating the restated trust and compelling the transfer of the two real properties and return of cash back to our client, as trustee of the trust, allowing her to administer it according to her parents’ intentions.
Now, instead of receiving a relatively modest inheritance as her father’s new wife had intended, our client secured a substantial 40% share of the trust — representing significant real property value — fully honoring her parents’ original estate plan.
