Happy 2018! Here’s a Review of our 2017

Happy 2018! Our best wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year. We published a year end video on Facebook, this is a quick review of the themes we covered on the blog in 2017.

Our year of writing was greatly assisted by celebrities. Unfortunately for them, of course, but perfect, timely, and very relevant for our purposes. There’s the ongoing Prince estate, a probate process that looks like it may take years to end. Just this week the probate judge disallowed three people who claimed to be relatives of Prince. It’s the Prince estate’s ongoing businesses that mostly concerned us – a perfect example of what an operating business (make no mistake, music is a business) goes through while it’s owner’s estate goes through probate.

Another major theme, one that concerns so many families, is second marriages. Glen Campbell’s probate case has been all over the media throughout the Fall.  Multiple marriages, children from different wives, differing expectations from them all and, inevitably, issues that crop up in probate …. or just before, when a long illness is involved.

Issues arise during the course of long illnesses that not only cloud family relationships but carry over into the estate and probate process. Kasey Kasem’s estate was a prime example, one echoed in Campbell’s and so many others – where some family members feel they are cut off from their loved one, not allowed contact, are distressed and that feeling carries over into probate.

We’ve seen this enough times that we felt compelled to discuss what people are really looking for when they challenge a will, or a trust, or … Hint: it’s almost never about the money.

During the summer we ran a series of posts about the absolute worst case scenario of undue influence. A case out of the North End of Boston where an elderly man ran into a rapacious caregiver. Friends shunted aside, pliable lawyers, shady testamentary documents, an apartment building in the balance, it had it all … which, of course, was the perfect illustration of so many things to look for.

We hope you enjoyed our articles as much as we enjoyed sharing them. We’ll be back at it in 2018!