Bleeding money from trust

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? CA
My brother as trustee of our father trust, has agreed to a stipulation to provide the court with an accounting of the trust and its assets over the last 4 years. We had reached an agreement, based on his admission of wrongdoing, that he would resign as trustee and put his monthly Calpers check (my dad's deat benefit), in a direct deposit account that I would then use to defray the costs of the mortgage he had taken out on the house that my dad left in the trust. He has now retained a lawyer and I have been informed by the lawyer that none of this will now happen until after the accounting has been presented, if then. I had started the process of taking over the trust and had gone online and registered with smith barney, vanguard, and citibank to begin administering the money market funds in these IRA accounts. There is also $31,000.00 in savings bonds still in my brothers possesion. I believe that my brother understands that there is no criminal penalty to his malfeasance, and that he may as well take all he can get his hands on at this point. My question is, how do I stop him from spending any more money at this point.The court gave him until Nov. 10 to file the accounting and it could all be gone by then. To top that off my lawyer is out of town for the next 2 weeks. Any advice that you guys can give that would help me would be greatly appreciated.

Was this an agreement that a court was aware of or just something you all informally agreed to outside of court? Was there any penalty in the agreement if he didn't provide the accounting?

Did he agree in writing to his wrongdoing and is the exact nature of the wrongdoing specified?

You all have been treating him far too nicely. If you have evidence of the wrongdoing you need to be filing breach of fiduciary duty charges against him or whatever charges describe what he actually did. If you have no evidence the trust beneficiaries need to be requesting an audit. Is your attorney smart enough to determine whether charges need to be brought against your brother or not?

As long as he is official trustee you have no power to stop him from spending monies. Can't you ask the court to freeze the account?

DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA ([email protected])

Thank you for responding again Dandy Don,
Yes we have what believe to be evidence, bank statements from one trust account showing numerous withdrawals in Tahoe, Reno, Vegas etc... We can see that several life insurance payouts were deposited in this account and are now gone. My brother admits to using trust monies for his own benefit. This agreement was an informal one that he originally agreed to but he reneged after telling his wife about the Calpers check deposit, and her subsequently going berserk about that. I am dissatisfied that my lawyer hasn't wanted to do any of the things you suggest even though he has seen these bank statements and knows that there has been no accounting ever of the trust. There is also 2 IRA accounts that are losing money everyday as the stock market crashes. We also have access to the trust account online and we can see that he has cashed the savings bonds and deposited them there, which I can only assume he will keep on using for his on personla benefit. I do not know if the freezing accounts thing is an option here in CA.

You need a new attorney, preferably a business law attorney who also has access to the professional advice of a trust attorney or vice versa.

The fact that he cashed the savings bonds and life insurance money is not necessarily evidence of wrongdoing--someone would have to look at who the savings bonds were made out to and who (if anyone) was the beneficiary of the policies before making a determination that anything improper was done, but maybe you were just making the point that he has access to the money.

Hopefully you all will find something else he is guilty of.

I have contacted another attorney and am awaiting a call back right now. The statements that I have, spanning a 3 yr. period, show deposits that match up to known life insurance policies (all of which list the trust as beneficiary), and withdrawals on those monies in such places as tahoe, reno, and vegas. It is about $150,000.00 worth of witdrawals basically using the trust account as a personal account. He also paid himself to do work on the trust residence and the bills are outlandishly high, and, from what I have seen of the house none of the work is actually finished. The savings bonds,(in the name of the trust) were cashed yesterday and he has moved out of the house and is going to pay the mortgage with this new cash, thus freeing his own cash up to rent another place. He refinanced the house in january and took out around $80,000.00 and now the house is negative equity. Now I have hound out from talking to his friend, who is an attorney, that my brother cashed a $60,000.00 check written to my dad, (their names are the same except my brother is the II). He also wrote checks on my dad's checking account, as my dad, for 3 to 6 months after my dad died. Thanks again for being so responsive.

You need an attorney who has experience in bringing breach of fiduciary duty lawsuits against trustees and/OR civil or criminal charges for the theft/forgery with the check he cashed improperly. So who do you think will get to be the new trustee after he is replaced?