StephenDavid
Member
What is the name of your state?GA
My parent's died nearly 2 years ago. My sister was named as Executor/Trustee but also had a large personal loan taken out against her portion of the estate, to be paid off when both my parents passed. She has been dishonest and deceptive from the first. She and her lawyer refused to disclose the loan amount or send a copy of the Promissory Note for over a year. And her lawyer repeatedly has passed along my sister's lies and slander to discredit me with my own lawyers.
That worked well for them with my first lawyer, who clearly colluded with them and rubber-stamped everything they claimed. For example, her lawyer claimed she had no legal responsibility to disclose her loan or Promissory Note, citing a portion of the law that stated she had no responsibility to the Probate Court. I fired the first lawyer after 3 months and $3K as it was clear she was simply agreeing with everything they claimed and not genuinely representing my interests.
After hiring another lawyer, we agreed to distribute the property first, which was a bad decision on my part, but I was trying to be as cooperative as I could just to get through this (I am fighting two forms of terminal cancer). However, the process that I thought would take only a couple of months, turned out to be nearly a year. When we finally got around to discussing the loan, her lawyer again tried to deny that she had a responsibility to disclose the details of the loan. My new lawyer, however, cited another portion of the law that says that, although she wasn't responsible to the Probate Court, she was indeed responsible for financial accounting to the beneficiaries of the Estate, and as the Loan was against the Estate, she was responsible to disclose this information. My sister's lawyer then immediately responded with no further arguments, and sent a copy of the Promissory Note and a typed up list that was supposed to show payments she made during the last 6 months prior to my parent's death. It actually showed that my sister had made no payments for those six months, but one single "makeup" payment that was paid immediately following my hiring my lawyer.
So at that point we actually had written proof, from the Promissory Note and the lack of 6 months regular payments that she was in default on the loan for at least the last 5 months of the loan. The Promissory Note stipulated that if she went into default and a lawyer was needed to collect, she would be required to pay all legal fees and missed interest payments would be charged at 15% (much higher than the normal 4% interest payments she was making). We had a lot of proof by then (from emails and phone calls) that my sister had been lying to me from the very start and that they had continually refused to reveal the loan details until over a year after I first hired a lawyer.
Unfortunately, just when we had all the proof we needed to address these issues (this past September 2018) my lawyer quit the firm and turned me over to one of the Partners. It has been a disaster ever since. When I was able to get hold of the new lawyer, he seemed to understand the situation and be on the same page as myself. He was going to point out all the issues of her dishonesty and the fact that it was clear that I had been forced to hire legal representation because of this dishonesty and refusal to release the loan information. However, my lawyer then disappeared and did not return phone or email messages for six weeks. When I finally got hold of him, he said that he was a local city attorney and had been tied up with elections going on at the time. He promised me that was all over and he would be more involved in working my case. Unfortunately, that has not really been happening. He has gone multiple weeks at a time without giving me updates or returning my calls/emails. At one point, after not hearing from him for awhile, I was able to finally reach him and he told me that "Your case is important to you, but I have more important cases I'm working." He also said (very angrily) that, although they had no other lawyer available with his firm, he could refer me to some other outside lawyer if I wanted. However, he was already my third lawyer and I had already invested 3 months or so with him. We also had all the proof we needed in my sister's own writing. All that needed to happen was for him to put a little effort in conveying and arguing our case with the other lawyer. So I stuck with him.
Since the only proof we had of my sister's loan payments showed she was in default the last 6 months of the loan, I had him ask for proof of her payments from the year previous to my parent's death (2016). She eventually came up with a list of payments for the entire life of the loan and it showed she had been cheating on the loan payments, and thus in default, for all but the first 6 months of the entire life of the loan. Based on the original agreement at 4% (and not the 15% required for default) my sister had cheated the estate out of nearly a full year's interest ($8K) over the life of the loan.
At one point we received an email from her lawyer claiming she had always been honest with me, and that they would go after me for legal fees. Given the fact that he was forwarding all this information that clearly demonstrated she had not been honest, it became clear he was bluffing, and that my lawyer had also not conveyed the details of any of our arguments to him. So I wrote my own letter and had my lawyer review it and make it more concise. He said he had been too busy and thanked me for writing the letter, which he then sent. But that was after he had been my lawyer for 6 months and never conveyed basic information that we knew about when he first came on board.
So right now, we have an incredible amount of proof that my sister was not only in default on the loan but also that she has been dishonest with me since I first talked to her. However, my lawyer has once again disappeared into the woodwork for two weeks, and won't call to give updates. I am 65 years old and have hired a number of different lawyers up north over the years with no problems at all. But I am getting very frustrated and worn out by the fact that this should have been able to be settled months ago and I have no way to pressure my current lawyer to do anything at all on my case (other than send me bills for activities, most of which I doubt he ever did).
Any advice on what I should do?
My parent's died nearly 2 years ago. My sister was named as Executor/Trustee but also had a large personal loan taken out against her portion of the estate, to be paid off when both my parents passed. She has been dishonest and deceptive from the first. She and her lawyer refused to disclose the loan amount or send a copy of the Promissory Note for over a year. And her lawyer repeatedly has passed along my sister's lies and slander to discredit me with my own lawyers.
That worked well for them with my first lawyer, who clearly colluded with them and rubber-stamped everything they claimed. For example, her lawyer claimed she had no legal responsibility to disclose her loan or Promissory Note, citing a portion of the law that stated she had no responsibility to the Probate Court. I fired the first lawyer after 3 months and $3K as it was clear she was simply agreeing with everything they claimed and not genuinely representing my interests.
After hiring another lawyer, we agreed to distribute the property first, which was a bad decision on my part, but I was trying to be as cooperative as I could just to get through this (I am fighting two forms of terminal cancer). However, the process that I thought would take only a couple of months, turned out to be nearly a year. When we finally got around to discussing the loan, her lawyer again tried to deny that she had a responsibility to disclose the details of the loan. My new lawyer, however, cited another portion of the law that says that, although she wasn't responsible to the Probate Court, she was indeed responsible for financial accounting to the beneficiaries of the Estate, and as the Loan was against the Estate, she was responsible to disclose this information. My sister's lawyer then immediately responded with no further arguments, and sent a copy of the Promissory Note and a typed up list that was supposed to show payments she made during the last 6 months prior to my parent's death. It actually showed that my sister had made no payments for those six months, but one single "makeup" payment that was paid immediately following my hiring my lawyer.
So at that point we actually had written proof, from the Promissory Note and the lack of 6 months regular payments that she was in default on the loan for at least the last 5 months of the loan. The Promissory Note stipulated that if she went into default and a lawyer was needed to collect, she would be required to pay all legal fees and missed interest payments would be charged at 15% (much higher than the normal 4% interest payments she was making). We had a lot of proof by then (from emails and phone calls) that my sister had been lying to me from the very start and that they had continually refused to reveal the loan details until over a year after I first hired a lawyer.
Unfortunately, just when we had all the proof we needed to address these issues (this past September 2018) my lawyer quit the firm and turned me over to one of the Partners. It has been a disaster ever since. When I was able to get hold of the new lawyer, he seemed to understand the situation and be on the same page as myself. He was going to point out all the issues of her dishonesty and the fact that it was clear that I had been forced to hire legal representation because of this dishonesty and refusal to release the loan information. However, my lawyer then disappeared and did not return phone or email messages for six weeks. When I finally got hold of him, he said that he was a local city attorney and had been tied up with elections going on at the time. He promised me that was all over and he would be more involved in working my case. Unfortunately, that has not really been happening. He has gone multiple weeks at a time without giving me updates or returning my calls/emails. At one point, after not hearing from him for awhile, I was able to finally reach him and he told me that "Your case is important to you, but I have more important cases I'm working." He also said (very angrily) that, although they had no other lawyer available with his firm, he could refer me to some other outside lawyer if I wanted. However, he was already my third lawyer and I had already invested 3 months or so with him. We also had all the proof we needed in my sister's own writing. All that needed to happen was for him to put a little effort in conveying and arguing our case with the other lawyer. So I stuck with him.
Since the only proof we had of my sister's loan payments showed she was in default the last 6 months of the loan, I had him ask for proof of her payments from the year previous to my parent's death (2016). She eventually came up with a list of payments for the entire life of the loan and it showed she had been cheating on the loan payments, and thus in default, for all but the first 6 months of the entire life of the loan. Based on the original agreement at 4% (and not the 15% required for default) my sister had cheated the estate out of nearly a full year's interest ($8K) over the life of the loan.
At one point we received an email from her lawyer claiming she had always been honest with me, and that they would go after me for legal fees. Given the fact that he was forwarding all this information that clearly demonstrated she had not been honest, it became clear he was bluffing, and that my lawyer had also not conveyed the details of any of our arguments to him. So I wrote my own letter and had my lawyer review it and make it more concise. He said he had been too busy and thanked me for writing the letter, which he then sent. But that was after he had been my lawyer for 6 months and never conveyed basic information that we knew about when he first came on board.
So right now, we have an incredible amount of proof that my sister was not only in default on the loan but also that she has been dishonest with me since I first talked to her. However, my lawyer has once again disappeared into the woodwork for two weeks, and won't call to give updates. I am 65 years old and have hired a number of different lawyers up north over the years with no problems at all. But I am getting very frustrated and worn out by the fact that this should have been able to be settled months ago and I have no way to pressure my current lawyer to do anything at all on my case (other than send me bills for activities, most of which I doubt he ever did).
Any advice on what I should do?
