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Trusts & Estates Litigation

Trusts and estates litigation takes many forms. Disputes may arise involving an estate plan or the administration of a trust, probate, or conservatorship estate. Often, the disputes are deeply personal in nature as they may involve the death or decline of family members or loved ones. Our dedicated team of Trusts and Estates litigators understands the multi-faceted layers of complexity of these disputes and assists with a full range of trust and probate controversies.

These disputes often require specialized knowledge and expertise of the Probate Code and Probate Court procedures. Our trusts and estates litigators assist clients with elder financial abuse claims, contested conservatorships, defense and initiation of will and trust contests, interpretation disputes concerning complex estate planning documents, including, but not limited to reformation of instruments, modification or termination of trusts, disputes over ownership of assets in which an estate, trust, or conservatorship may have an interest, including, but not limited to a contract to make a will claims; accounting, financial, and tax disputes; removal or appointment of fiduciaries; fee disputes; administration issues; community property disputes; and breach of fiduciary duty claims.

Within this category of services we represent a broad spectrum of clients, including individual and corporate fiduciaries, in their capacities as trustees, personal representatives, special administrators, conservators, and guardians. We also represent beneficiaries, creditors, and other interested persons in trust, probate, conservatorship, and elder financial abuse matters.

  • Successfully enforcing an oral contract by a parent to leave the parent’s estate to a child in exchange for a significant personal benefit given by the child to the parent during the parent’s lifetime.
  • Recovering funds improperly transferred after the first spouse’s death by the surviving spouse from a trust created by both spouses during their joint lifetimes.
  • Obtaining a judgment against a child who obtained loans against a parent’s real property assets using a power of attorney and then expended the funds received for the child’s own benefit.

WT Wins: Weintraub Awarded $1.5M Judgment in Elder Abuse Litigation

Danielle Diebert obtained a judgment of approximately $1.5 million at trial on behalf of our client as conservator of the estate. The court determined that the conservatee’s son had misappropriated assets belonging to the conservatee, including her real properties, in bad faith and through the commission of elder financial abuse. …

Weintraub Tobin and Waldron & Bragg Merge

Download: WTWB Merger Press Release FINAL.pdf Weintraub Tobin Chediak Coleman Grodin Law Corporation and Waldron & Bragg, a professional corporation, have jointly announced the merger of their business law and litigation firms. The combined firm will be named Weintraub Tobin Chediak Coleman Grodin and have offices in Sacramento, Calif., San…

Bringing Down the Hammer – California Appellate Court Upholds $1,000 Per Day Sanction For Failure To Timely File Accounting

by Carlena L. Tapella
The Trusts & Estates Law Blog

As trusts and estates litigation counsel, we often have matters where a fiduciary, either as a trustee, conservator, personal representative, or agent under a power of attorney, fails to provide financial information when properly requested, or to provide an accounting if one is required under law.  The result is that…