Is this legal????

What is the name of your state? CA

Mother died in January 2004. Only beneficiaries are my sister and me. I just learned from my aunt that my sister may have used her Power of Attorney (sibling is also successor trustee) to turn Mom's bank accounts into a Pay on Death account (?) and named herself as beneficiary - one week after Mom died! Mom had a Living Trust and pour over will - bank accounts were named as the Trust, Mom as Trustor. Pour over will states her house is to go to my sister and me - and that "remainder of the estate" is to be divided equally between sister and myself. Now sister says since it's a pay on death account, to her -it's all hers (about $100,000). I know mom would not have wanted it to be this way and I'm very upset. She has stopped speaking to me - just sends me emails saying I have to trust her. We have never been close.

Is this correct? Is there some kind of loophole that allows her to make changes to an irrovockable trust after the Trustor dies? Doesn't the bank have some kind of rules about this? I'm very confused.....

Thanks for your assistance....

Sister has abused POA--this trust money was supposed to have been put into a trust and disbursed as the trust instructed. Get a business law or trust attorney to send her a letter informing her that if she doesn't put the money back into a trust account that she will be facing embezzlement charges acccording to California law. The POA expired at the same moment the death occurred (although I'm sure she didn't know it, or maybe she did and she didn't care) so she had no legal authority to convert this money to her own use.

DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA ([email protected])

Dandy Don

Thanks so much! I'm talking with a Trust attorney now.

How is it that the bank allowed this to happen? Shouldn't they have said something to my sister when she did this? Just curious - it seems so unfair that someone could get away with this...if my Aunt hadn't of mentioned this to me - I never would have known....

In the letter that the trust attorney sends, please don't tip off sister by telling her about the fact that POA expires at the death, since you may need to use that against her in the embezzlement lawsuit if it goes to trial.

You can't necessarily blame the bank because you don't know all of the facts yet of what actually occurred. She may or may not have used the POA to get this money. I'm guessing that she used her status as trustee to claim it, in which case it would have been acceptable, but the bank should have issued the check payable TO THE NAME OF THE TRUST so that she would have had to deposit it in a separate account for the trust. Bank would have no way of knowing in advance how she was going to handle this money.

DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA ([email protected])

Thanks so much for your assistance. You're right, I won't jump to conclusions - just share information with my new attorney. I'll let you know how this shakes out.