Family Law

• Divorce
• Premarital Agreement

Criminal Law

• Forgery
  Undue Influence – In some cases, fraud, forgery or undue influence caused the testator to add the will codicil against his or her own free will. They have been manipulated into it as well. A person who is elderly and mentally weak can be unduly influenced or lack a proper understanding of what they are doing.

Health Law

• Personal Injury
  The second way is what’s known as a contingency fee or a percentage fee. Most people are familiar with that in connection with personal injury cases, and those types of fees, the attorney gets paid a percentage of what the attorney recovers for the client, and if the attorney does not recover anything for the client, the attorney does not receive any fees.

Trusts and Estates

• Estate Planning
  Many companies manufacture and sell “do it yourself†estate planning kits and forms. They purport to allow individuals to draft and execute their own testamentary will or trust. However, unfortunately, these forms are often legally insufficient to carry out the individual’s intent upon death. Other times, an attorney or other person may draft a will for a testator to execute. Unfortunately, they may have made unintentional errors in the will or trust. Such errors often go unnoticed until the will or trust is to be administered in probate court. Our Oakland probate litigation attorney represents family members whose loved ones left a defective or legally insufficient will or trust. The document fails to carry out the testator’s true intent.
• Wills
  A codicil is a document that makes small changes to the terms of a last will and testament. An individual may use codicils when they want to amend their last wishes without having to create an entirely new will. A codicil will only be legally valid and enforceable if executed in the same manner as a will. Codicils are particularly useful upon remarriage, additional children born, or new property acquired by an estate.
• Trusts
  One of the benefits of establishing a revocable living trust is that the grantor retains the power to alter or annul the trust at any time. Additionally, although the process is often more difficult, it is possible to amend or modify even an irrevocable living trust. However, in some circumstances, the grantor may be coerced or influenced to make trust amendments that do not reflect his or her true wishes. You may be unaware that your loved one amended the trust of which you are a beneficiary until after his or her death. Therefore, sometimes it may be necessary for beneficiaries to contest a trust amendment. Although such a contest is possible, it is a complex process requiring the assistance of an experienced trust litigation attorney.
• Probate
  If another party is denying your inheritance or if they are mishandling a loved one’s estate, then you may have to pursue probate litigation to ensure that California probate law will uphold the final wishes of the deceased.

Finance Law

• Tax Law
  Another interesting question arises concerning defective trusts, but it arises in a different way. In other words, the question is not whether the trust is defective, because the rules for trusts are a little looser and more liberal than the rules for wills. The question is, “Can the trust be changed after the death?” The answer is, “Yes, under certain circumstances.” It’s a little too complex to describe in 25 words or less, but generally speaking, if all the beneficiaries agree that they want the trust to be changed, you can go to court and get the judge to sign off on that and change the trust even after the death. If there has been a change in circumstances, for example, the tax law changed and the trust never got updated, you can sometimes go to court and get the trust changed on that basis.