Nomen Nescio wrote:
Please forgive me as the english is not my first language. I was born
from the desceased man as his love child and adopted by the other
stepfather. My father has died but before died say he was leaving large
amount for me in the family trust. The family trust inheritence is the
private seal in court. The wife and the brother try to lie and say, I
am not maintained as his daughter or the father was not in right mind
when the father said me as the rightful owner of the inheritence! I
have the address in California and legal codes of the family trust. How
do I find the bank? How do I find the barrister that oversees the
trust? They may pretend they not know where I am when estate is
disolved I will not get the inheritence! What advice is there you can
give me!
I'm not a lawyer. I'll just tell you what I'd do in your shoes. Take it
for what it's worth, which is less than you didn't pay for it.
In California, administration of estates and trusts is governed by
probate courts. These are divisions of each county's Superior Court.
Normally the courts of the county in which your father resided would
have jurisdiction. So I'd start with an inquiry to the clerk of the
Probate Division of that county's Superior Court. It's also possible
that the trust is under the jurisdiction of the court in the county
where Wife and Brother are administering the trust. If that's a
different county, I'd make inquiries there too. If the trust is under
the jurisdiction of any of these courts, there should be records at the
Probate Division.
Another possibility is that the trust has been removed from court
jurisdiction. If the trustee is a trust company, then this may well
have been done. The court will have a record showing that the trust was
removed and who the trustee is. Make inquiries and follow the paper
trail.
Probate Code 17200 governs court actions concerning a trust. If you are
a beneficiary, you can petition the court to do such things as
determine who the beneficiaries of the trust are or to compel the
trustee to provide an accounting. (If you're not a beneficiary, you can
petition anyway, and your petition will be dismissed because you
aren't. At that point, you're pretty much out of luck, unless you can
upset the trust or the will altogether.)
Remember that your biological father's oral promise is just as good as
the paper it wasn't written on. It doesn't even matter whether he was
in his right mind or not. A probate court isn't going to enforce an
oral promise that you claim a now-dead man made over the opposition of
his next of kin. If you were adopted, whatever rights you may have had
as his child were probably terminated; and if he prepared a will or a
trust (after you were born) that didn't name you, you probably have no
recourse.
Probate lawyers handle this sort of matter for you. It will cost you
little or nothing to discuss your situation with one long enough to
determine whether you have something worth pursuing.
--
Not a lawyer,
Chris Green
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