Trust reversal after 15 years

[Riverfreddy]

What is the name of your state?Washington
Our mother died 17 years ago. She had a proper revocable Trust, duly filed. Per this Trust my wife and I were the beneficiaries of real property. I was the trustee and performed all duties as such. Then 2 years ago, this real property was sold in foreclosure. After all liens were paid there was a large excess which was held by the county clerk. As my wife and I were listed alone on the Deed of Title, we applied for full distribution. However, my brother showed up at that hearing and presented a Will dated shortly before our mother died. This Will was never shown to me, filed, etc. This Will stated that my brother also receive 1/2 of the real property listed above. This is 15 years after the death of our mother. The judge gave him half the money. I want to sue him for that back plus interest and as the will appears to be fraudulent, penalties . Our mother died of lung cancer and was heavily drugged during the last phases. My wife was the paid caretaker.

 

[FlyingRon]

You will need an attorney. How did you end up with the property deeded to you? Was it titled to the trust? If it was titled to the trust, the will has zero bearing on it. If the trust says you get it, you get it. If the will says the brother gets it, you still get it.

If the house was not titled to the trust, then it becomes part of the estate and the estate needed to be probate to apply the terms of the will to whatever residual assets there were.

If the property was deeded to you by your mother while she was still alive, then neither the trust nor the will apply.

 

[Taxing Matters]

Either the real property was in the trust or it wasn't. If it was in the trust, then (1) the will would not affect it at all and (2) as trustee of the trust you would have had the obligation to pay (using money from the trust) the real estate taxes on that property — if you didn't do that then you failed to, as you put it, perform "all duties" as trustee. If the property was titled to the trust, you should have defended your brother's lawsuit by pointing that out. And given that you say a large amount of money was involved, you should have had a lawyer representing you in that.

If the property was not titled to the trust, then your mother's will would have determined what happened to it. Even 15 years later, the will would still determine what happens to the house and the sale proceeds from it if the house was still titled to your mother when she died. If you believed the will was fraudulent or invalid, you needed to present the evidence of that in the court proceeding that your brother filed. The problem you have here is that if you had proved the will invalid, what happens is that the state intestate succession law applies to determine who gets it unless there was a previous will that was valid. You don't mention any previous will. If the intestate succession law applies and you and your brother were the only children your mother had then the property still gets split 50% each between you. In other words, if you were the only two kids and there was no prior valid will, then whether that will your brother produced was valid or not makes no real difference here because either way you each would get 50% of the house.

The fact that the judge awarded your brother half tells me that the judge apparently concluded that the property was not in the trust when your mother died and (2) that either the will was good or that the state intestate succession law applied to give you each 50%.

Once that decision is final and the time for appeal has passed there is nothing more you can do about it. You cannot bring a new action against your brother because the issue of who gets the money from the house was already decided in a court proceeding. You had to raise all your defenses in that first court proceeding. Trying to bring the same claims again in a second proceeding is barred by a legal principle known as res judicata.

The upshot here is that the house was estate property unless it was titled to the trust. If it was estate property, it appears that you and your brother would each be entitled to half of it, either under the will he produced or under intestate succession if that will was not valid. So you likely don't have a good claim to all of it anyway. And even if you did, you needed to make that claim in the first court case. Once that case was over, it's too late to contest it. You cannot bring a second court case against your brother over the same exact issue.