Need Advice in CA...am I even in the right law advice forum?

[shari7]

Hello out there;

I posted a probably too long message here (about two posts down from this one) titled "We Beat'Em In Appellate Court and We'll Beat You Too". If someone would be willing to scroll down to about the bottom of that post where I have numbered the questions I really need help with, I sure would appreciate some input.

I am obviously not very legally knowledgeable. In fact if you see my questions and realize they are more suited to another area, please let me know that if you could.

Sad to say my very legally adept sister and her even more talented daughter always planned to steal from me my one third interest in a house that my father left as part of his estate that was to be divided among us 3 in equal one third shares. But my sister and her daughter installed themselves in the house, refused to allow the house to be sold, refused to buy me out, and refused to be bought out.They even refused my husband's offer to do repairs of damage they caused through neglect of the property (they were not even paying rent) while my sister runs her fraud scheme and collects SSI ( I guess that is another thing that really makes me angry - while she gets to go to top specialists of her choosing for her self induced problems and phonied-up "ailments", I am stuck having to try to figure how not to let her rob me of the money from this house that would be so useful now that my fairly recently diagnosed medical conditions have been determined to be quite a lot more serious than was originally believed. They chose to let 5 years of back taxes and garbage bills back up knowing that after we pay our own property taxes, we cannot afford to pay the property taxes for them too. So now this five years is almost up and the tax collector will be entering the picture which was part of their plan from the beginning I believe. Either to try adverse possession, quiet title, or who knows, anything so they can beat me out of what little they didn't squander of the estate assets for the 5 + years of probate battles they insisted on waging with a will contest, suing the public administrator, trying to have judges disbarred, etc.

They are well known in our county for loving to thumb their noses at judges, attorneys, court personnel, etc. Most of the time they manage to stay, barely, within the law, although my sister usually snaps and is banned from whatever legal proceeding she has involved herself in at the moment. Then her daughter makes a good show of courtroom restraint and decorum, sounds like a little girl (voice only)- then wham! bam! dust clears and they win the case!

No attorney within at least 100 miles would touch the case with those two involved. Partition of course has been suggested, I couln't afford the retainer even if I was willing to go that route. I have been told that from the looks of court files, my sister and her daughter would do everything including appeals to make that the longest partition in the history of the country--that even if the house was worth twice as much, there would be nothing left.

Oh, heck I went and made this one too long, too! I guess it's obvious I am pretty desperate. Please help if you possibly can.

Thank you in advance.

 

[ALawyer]

If they are so notorious that no lawyer will handle a case in which they are involved, I do not know what to suggest. But most lawyers WOULD handle a case on an hourly basis, although that may not be attractive to you, just as handling it on a contingency basis would NOT be attractive to them.

 

[shari7]

If they are so notorious that no lawyer will handle a case in which they are involved, I do not know what to suggest. But most lawyers WOULD handle a case on an hourly basis, although that may not be attractive to you, just as handling it on a contingency basis would NOT be attractive to them.

Thanks ALawyer. I just don't have the retainer fee it seems the attorneys "must have" before they will even consider a case that would take some effort and creative thinking.

I ran out of money for consultation fees. My husband does construction side jobs (driveways, patios, fences, etc.)in addition to his regular job. One of his homeowner customers, an attorney, as part payment for work done by my husband, set up a consultation with her firm's probate specialist. Naturally, his plan was "partition".

This "probate specialist" was kind of snotty when he said partition was the only recourse he was aware of.

I suggested that an 'ouster' could, off the top of my head, anyway, be another recourse. This attorney said, with a faint chuckle and somewhat grudingly, that he supposed that was a thought. Then said, 'I'm impressed'. He may have meant that sarcastically. I only meant there is more than 'partition'.

I liked your $ by the hour idea, ALawyer. But, California, even the sticks where I live, an attorney, unless he's dumber than I am, is not going to help out for an hour or two or 10 for $125 or so per hour when he can make the same info into a case that he can sell to someone else for a minimum of $7500 upwards to sky's-the-limit.

Another question if you would, ALawyer: Which area would I want to go to to ask about going for a judgement lien?

And, in your opinion, with some expert guidance (an attorney, I mean), could a person conceivably do this on an advice only basis? I was hoping my interest in the property would at least be protected from sis and niece by going back to the Inventory and Appraisal that was filed while probate was still going on and that appraisal wass, of course, related when it came for disbursement of assets .

I know when it is about five minutes before the county tax collector gets ahold of the house for back property taxes, the deadbeat freeloaders, sis and her adult daughter, will hop on up, pay the five years back taxes (and garbage bills that they also didn't pay for these past five years that they have been sole occupants of the property), and go on to claim the house by adverse possession (my sister filed a homestead on the property about a day after First and Final was filed here in California before Pub. Administrator and County Council allowed the attorney in Vancouver, WA to file for Letters to administer the WA assets in what was ordered by the CA court to be ancillary to CA probate and what the WA attorney turned into a will contest (they don't have statutory fees like CA -- the county here in CA got $10,000)for his cut of the estate.

Any direction and/or advice will be greatly appreciated.

P.S. Do you think the District Attorney here in the CA county of probate has any say so in this matter where my sister and her daughter have for all intents and purposes stolen from me in their refusal to surrender my access to the one-third value of the estate, the house in this case, that I was willed by my father in 1993 and that was part of distrilbution by the court? Or, is that another joke on me?

Also, maybe I could take the letter my sister wrote to my father in 1987 telling him to tell Social Security she pays $400 per month for rent, which of course she never did, (this is the same house that I now own 1/3 interest), otherwise, according to her letter, her FRAUDULENT SSI Disability amount would be cut. Or, is this useless info?

Arggh!!

What do you suggest?

Thanks for listening.