The Expert Podcast

Don't change anything; let the original ideas stay, and just arrange it by paragraph: so you may have a relative or a close person to uh your family who may have recently deceased is somebody trying to steal your inheritance money anytime there's somebody who dies or even when they get sick go into hospice sometimes even before they're sick when they're older many people will look at that as an opportunity to start improperly transferring Assets in their favor when an older person dies many times there's assets that go into an estate could be bank accounts real estate Insurance uh stocks right other types of assets and when somebody is known to either be recently deceased about to die in hospice or even when they get old and they know that they're going to die within a few years a lot of greedy people will start taking assets from that person and putting them in their name it's called probate fraud and if you are a family member of that deceased person or a relative or even a close colleague or friend you need to be on the lookout for this it's way more common than people think.
What happens is when an estate is distributed after a person dies the executive of the estate can only distribute what they are told about for asking assets many times insiders it could be family members could be an attorney it could be an accountant could be a business partner will know that if they try to hide assets or transfer them and conceal them in advance of the person dying they might be able to get away with stealing those assets it's a very very common scenario here's how it works give you an example of a conversation we had with a client within the last few weeks this person was a member of four siblings they had two brothers and a sister their mother died a year ago their father died 10 years ago when they were growing up their parents were reasonably comfortable they weren't Filthy Rich they had a nice house that they owned for cash no mortgage they had a bunch of stocks that they had purchased 20 30 years ago that were worth some money they had a lot of money in the bank account and one of the siblings one of the brothers had died about 20 years ago so he was dead um before both parents did one of the other siblings um was reasonably wealthy themsel the BR the other brother he was pretty rich and when the parents were getting older and the father had already died and the mother was getting sick he said look don't give me anything in your will and remember that word will we'll come back to that word will it's very important that particular word how it's used and he told them don't leave me any money cuz I'm I'm rich I'm well off the two remaining sisters one of them was okay she had decent amount of money but she wasn't Rich the other one was struggling So eventually the mother died and the sister who was our client who wasn't really rich wanted to buy the house from the other sister her half because the house was supposed to be split up between the two of them and the other sister said no I'm not selling you the house so she started looking into other assets and turns out there was no other assets there were no bank accounts no stocks no vehicles and it made no sense because the parents were both um they had worked for a municipal utility company like a water company electric company and they both had very good pensions so they had income after they died and the father had started purchasing stocks back in the 1970s before anybody else was buying stocks and had accumulated a pretty good portfolio all of a sudden there were no stocks so the other sister that was that was kind of poor uh was trying to hide things no there's no bank accounts oh I don't know what happened to this life insurance and we did an investigation and we found that for the couple years prior to the mother dying when she was in poor health and you know in and out of hospitals she had started to sell off these stocks she had started to take money from bank accounts she even went to the trouble of putting a lean against the house for equity loan to get cash from the house that's why she didn't want to sell the house to the sister because that would be discovered and it turns out there was about $800,000 of assets wealth that have been transferred to this other sister and our client you know she figured the parents had a couple hundred thousand maybe in in uh cash and and plus the house but it turns out there was $800,000 in bank accounts and stocks that had been what's called a fraudulent conveyance uh improper transfer to the other sister and maybe other people so what do you do about it well one of the things that comes up when we have these conversations with clients is sometimes the client says well I don't want to get involved because you know I don't want to create problems well a couple things to keep in mind first of all you want to know whether or not a relative stole money from you even if you don't want to get the money back you want to know and here's the reason why it's not like a stranger that you're never kind to have interaction with again you're going to have to make decisions on both being involved with that person emotionally and financially and your family family reunions maybe they babysit your kids maybe you're going to um do something with the you know the family events right holidays if you don't know whether or not that person has stolen money from you it's not going to be for good decision- making the second thing is remember that word will we talked about will is not just the name of a legal document will describes what goes into that document it is the last will of that deceased person it is their wishes it is what they want to happen that's what will is it is I will this to happen so if in their will they say I want to give this money to this person and this money to that person if you let somebody do something different than that will you're actually dishonor in the wishes of your relative or that deceased person right you're insulting what they wanted to have happen so if you decide you want to give that money to the other person that's fine let the will distribute the money how it's supposed to be and then give that as a gift to the other person The Sibling the sister whoever right you don't want to dishonor the will and you don't want to be in the dark about somebody in your family being a thief either I know it's hard to face and it may be a difficult reality to kind of swallow but at some point you're going to realize this and see other things happening so how is this discovered well you want to start with an asset search to find out what is the snapshot of the assets for both the deceased person and this other um relative or person is trying to steal the money turns out the person that stole the money all of a sudden had paid off their mortgage they had bought a lot of expenses of assets let's say won't get into details right around the time that about 2 years before the mother had died paid off their mortgage on their house bought a lot of expensive toys and goodies so where' that come from and they didn't make a whole lot of money either so it was suspicious well and then we did the second part which is asset tracing asset tracing is looking at the flow of funds not the snapshot of what the assets are right now but asset tracing gets in into where did the money come from the money that came into the account was it a wire transfer a check an insurance policy was it a real estate settlement that was sold right was it that home equity loan that was transferred into