What is wrong with attorneys???

What is the name of your state? Oklahoma (with a case in Missouri)

Or is it me?? how long should it take a Lawyer to respond to a request to hire??

I have been looking for a Lawyer for three weeks now to review my case and have not had one reply. I tried the "Find a lawyer" service on this site and was assigned to two attorneys but not even a "no thank you" email response. I tried a similar service on another site with "0" responses. Last week I located a probate Lawyer in Missouri and sent him a direct email but so far nothing. Is it not common practice for an attorney to have their secretary send some kind of response if they are not interested?

Below is an example of my letter to an attorney. Any suggestions?

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Hi,

I am looking for an attorney to help me with a probate situation in Jefferson county Missouri. Here is a brief summery.

My Aunt died in 2002. Never married and no kids. My Uncle (her brother) died last month. Also never married and no kids. Their brother was named executor in their wills and distributed the estate. The recent distribution of my Uncle's estate was so far out of line from what many thought to be true that family started comparing notes. This brought attention to my Aunt's distribution also not following what we were told the will said by the executor. Probate was not filed and family is not allowed to see the wills. Joint ownership of accounts probably allowed them to circumvent probate. The estates were worth a 7 digit #. Many in the family suspect POA/elder abuse.

What would it cost to review the case, file for probate to get a copy of the wills and write a letter to the executor with request depending on information obtained in the wills.

Would not filing probate and discovery keep the 2002 will alive?

I and other family members live some distance from Missouri and frequent trips to MO. would be a problem. We are probably not interested in a drawn out law suit but would like to know the true wishes of the deceased. Also a well written letter may open talks for a settlement if one is warranted.

Thanks,
Mike Connor

Tulsa OK.

918-599------

You should edit your post to delete your name and city and the portion of your phone number that you included.

Get on the phone and start calling attorneys. You are more likely to get some feedback that way.

At the firm where I work, we respond to the majority of emails we receive, but not all. Asking for a quote for fees to do the kind of legal work you want done is probably not helping you. No one can say that it will cost $XX to do what you want done. What you are describing is a complex situation. You say you want a lawsuit filed and discovery sent, but then say that you don't want protracted litigation. It isn't even clear whether you have any standing to do anything.

You would be much better off communicating with lawyer's offices by phone instead of sending emails.

It's rude for the attorneys not to respond, but they don't want to offend you by telling you that there is not much for them to gain financially to take on your case.

You need to be talking first to the police department in whatever city/county you suspect that elderly financial abuse occurred to get their ideas of what evidence you would need to convict the suspect of financial abuse. Do you even know whether he had power of attorney? Is it possible that your aunt suffered from a disease or was taking medications that would have affected her judgement?

Was your aunt's estate officially probated or not? It's confusing to determine that from your posting.

A will is public record and all you need to do to look at your uncle's will is to contact the county courthouse probate court to get a copy of the will PLUS all other documents in the file to see exactly how the estate was handled. You all should have been raising objections before the estate was closed but I understand that would be difficult if no one in the family was notified about the probate proceedings.

Financial abuse cases can sometimes be difficult to win and unless you are prepared to pay large legal fees to resolve this or unless you can get the police or district attorney to file charges against this person with the evidence you have, your attorney will need to evaluate the circumstances and the documents in the case before deciding if you have a strong enough case to proceed.

las365,
I have an Internet business with my name, address and phone # on many web sites. I have become numb to personal information being on the Internet and consider it to be much like a phone book. I am more concerned about the crazy neanderthal types accross the street then people that frequent the type of sites I participate in.

I will start calling attorneys next week as email does not seem to be working. I would have thought that Lawyers participating in "Find a Lawyer" on this site would at least have the courtesy to respond in some way. Everything I know could be reviewed in 30 minutes so it seems that filing probate and writing a letter could produce a ballpark figure.


Dandy Don,
This case was discussed some in another thread. Probate was not filed so the wills are not available. Executor refuses to produce the wills. Executor had POA through joint ownership (is that possible?). My Aunt had relatively advanced dementia to where meaningful conversations were difficult.

At this point I want an attorney to force probate to produce a copy of the wills. I would try to do it myself except I am 400 miles away. I would rather pay $500 - $1000 for part of his time before morning break and a brief follow up after lunch. I would also hope a layman's letter to request help would not be ignored because of a lack of legal expertise.

Thanks for the replies,

Forcing probate so that the judge can ask for the will to be produced is an excellent idea and let's hope uncle won't surprise us with the news that he has destroyed the will or can't find it.

Also your situation gets even more interesting when you introduce the aspect of confirming that she had dementia. Which could make the will AND/OR the POA invalid if either were signed during a period in which it could be proven by medical records that she had dementia, which would then render the documents she signed as invalid since a person with diminished mental capacity is presumed to not be able to understand what they are signing. Looks like abuse of POA or elderly financial abuse if he can not provide an accounting or receipts to prove he actually spent the monies on her care and not kept from himself, and even further, a POA can not be used legally to change beneficiary designations or add his name as joint beneficiary to accounts!

Executor had POA through joint ownership (is that possible?).

Click to expand...

A Power of Attorney is a document that authorizes an agent to act on behalf of the person granting the POA. Depending upon how it is written, the powers granted to the agent can be very specific or very wide. But, self-dealing by the agent is, to say the least, frowned upon.

Joint ownership simply means that two or more people own an asset. If a right of survivorship is included, then, if one of the owners passes away, the surviving owners share the deceased's ownership share.

anteater said:

A Power of Attorney is a document that authorizes an agent to act on behalf of the person granting the POA....

Joint ownership simply means that two or more people own....

Click to expand...

I understand that but since there is POA abuse I would think there could also be "joint ownership" abuse. I would think that joint ownership would normally be used so one person could carry out the wishes of the other when circumstances did not allow them to do it themselves.

In this case there were three joint owners. It is probably not considered one being primary and two being secondary but that is the way I see it. Anyway, one of the secondary owners used his powers to remover the other secondary owner from the account and then dealt himself the entire account. That seems like abuse to me that should not be legal.